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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Christian Life 
A Study 

By ,/ 
BORDEN P. BOWNE 



Cincinnati: Carts & Jennings 

New York; Eaton & Mains 

J899 



§£C0*! n ^opy, 




40168 

COPYRIGHT 1 899, BY 
THE WESTERN METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 

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Preface 

This study aims to be a help to 
sincerity and naturalness in religion 
by clearing up some of the confusions 
of popular religious thought and 
speech. We all feel that in religion, 
of all matters, we should be supremely 
real and sincere ; and yet, owing to 
an ambiguous and misleading ter- 
minology and the illusions thence re- 
sulting, an uncomfortable air of arti- 
ficiality a7id unreality often seems to 
pervade the subject. This is not 
commonly due to insincerity, but 
rather to the ambiguity and uncer- 
tainty of the conventional thought 
and language in this field. This 
condition of things, however, is an 
evil, and is one of the sources of re- 
ligious weakness to-day. We grope 
in the dark of unwarranted expecta- 
3 



4 Preface 

tions and misdirected effort. And 
the only way out seems to be to clear 
up our thought and speech , so that 
we may know what we wish and what 
we mean, thus enabling the religious 
life to grow unhindered and undis- 
torted by illusion and misdirection. 

BORDEN P. BOWNE. 



The Christian Life 
A Study 

My purpose in writing, and the 
scope of the discussion, will best 
appear from some facts of expe- 
rience : 

Not long ago a most worthy 
minister of my acquaintance, one 
who had been preaching more 
than fifty years and who was a 
model of saintly living, came to 
another minister, also a friend of 
mine, to talk about the witness of 
the Spirit. And his trouble was 
that he could not feel sure that he 
had ever had this witness. The 
expectation awakened by the 
phrase had never been satisfied. 
And the good man's heart was 
disturbed, and he sought counsel 
of his brother. 

My professional life has largely 



The Christian Life 



been spent in contact with thought- 
ful young men and women ; and I 
have frequently observed an un- 
easy feeling on their part that the 
traditional phrases of religious 
speech do not set forth with un- 
strained naturalness and transpar- 
ent sincerity the facts of their 
religious life. Often they have 
formed a conception of what the 
religious life should be by reflec- 
tion on the customary and inher- 
ited phrases ; and thus they have 
been led to entertain unwarranted 
expectations. Then the failure 
to realize them has led to an un- 
comfortable sense of artificiality 
and unreality in all religious ex- 
perience. 

Some years ago one of our best 
and wisest men told me that he had 
felt the dangers in this direction 
so keenly that, when his children 
were growing toward the point 
where the conscious religious life 



A Study 7 

should begin, lie had had himself 
appointed class-leader to his own 
family, in order to preserve them 
from the confusion and danger 
of popular religious speech until 
they should have acquired suffi- 
cient mental and spiritual matu- 
rity to grasp the truth for them- 
selves. 

In addition, I may say that I 
have been listening intelligently 
to preaching for over thirty years. 
Of course I have heard a great 
many good sermons, but in all that 
time I have heard very few ser- 
mons on conversion and the be- 
ginnings of the religious life, 
whether in our own Church or 
in others, which were not both 
confused and confusing. Theo- 
logical expositions have been 
plentiful enough; vague verbal 
exhortations have abounded ; but 
there has been a grievous lack 
of clear statement of what the 



8 The Christian Life 

seeking soul is to expect, or of 
what is expected from it. 

Such facts suggest, what every 
thoughtful and observant person 
must recognize, that there is need 
of revising popular religious 
phraseology, and also of clarify- 
ing popular conceptions concern- 
ing the religious life itself, and 
especially concerning its begin- 
nings in conversion. This study 
is intended as a contribution to 
this desirable end. 

The popular confusion on 
this subject in our individualistic 
Churches has several leading 
sources, and our first work must be 
to indicate them. The first is the 
confounding the language of the- 
ology with the languge of experi- 
ence. The second is the mistak- 
ing of the abstract classifications 
of theological discussion for con- 
crete classifications of living men. 



A Study 9 

The third is an exaggerated indi- 
vidualism. We consider them in 
their order. 

The Language of Theology and 
the Language of Experience 

On this point we must note 
that a great many things may be 
theologically true which are not 
psychologically true. We may 
express and explain the experi- 
ence in terms of doctrine, and in 
so doing we may have the truth ; 
nevertheless, the doctrine is not a 
fact of consciousness, but a the- 
ory about the fact. 

Thus, when some brother of 
picturesque habit of speech says 
in the social meeting, "The devil 
told me not to come here to-night, " 
we are not to think that he has 
had an infernal interview. The 
fact of experience is, that he was 
disinclined to come, and this dis- 
inclination he attributes to the 



io The Christian Life 

devil. But however correct this 
may be as a theory of the hidden 
source of the temptation, it would 
be highly infelicitous to suppose 
that anything of the sort occurred 
within the consciousness of the 
individual himself. The experi- 
ence as he states it is not the ex- 
perience as lying within the range 
of consciousness, but rather the 
experience as theologized or, more 
properly, diabolized by this in- 
fernal reference. 

A less distasteful illustration of 
the difference between the lan- 
guage of theology and that of 
conscious experience may be 
found in our speech concerning 
the Divine providence in our 
lives. We believe and teach that 
our times are in God's hand ; but 
this does not imply that we have 
any perception of the Divine 
presence, or even that we can 
clearly trace the way in which 



A Study II 

God is working out his will con- 
cerning us. 

The life of experience is the 
familiar life of question, uncer- 
tainty, forethought, calculation, 
and venture, in all of which, 
moreover, we commonly seem 
left, at our own risk, to find the 
way ; and not infrequently we miss 
it, and go astray. We still retain 
the doctrine as an article of faith ; 
but we see that we must work out 
our own salvation nevertheless. 
The doctrine expresses a theory 
of life rather than a conscious ex- 
perience ; and unless we bear this 
distinction in mind, it is more 
likely to be a source of doubt 
than of comfort. 

This is self-evident to every 
thoughtful person; but what is 
not so plain to every one is, that 
there is a vast amount of language 
concerning the inner life which is 
of the same sort. It is not the 



12 The Christian Life 

language of experience, but of 
theological theory. A great many 
things are said about the work of 
the Lord in the soul; the oper- 
ations of the Spirit, his presence 
with us, — and all this may be true 
theologically, but it is not true 
psychologically. Moreover, a per- 
son who holds the theology in 
question may very naturally use 
it for expressing his experience; 
yet even that does not make it a 
fact of experience. It is an ob- 
ject of belief, not a fact of con- 
sciousness ; an accepted doctrine, 
not a conscious datum. Never- 
theless, this language of theory is 
put forward as the language of 
experience, and then confusion 
arises. By consequence a great 
many try to experience theology 
instead of experiencing religion. 
Two classes of persons escape 
this confusion. The first class 
consists of those persons, unskilled 



A Study 13 

in reflection, whose language has 
only an accidental connection 
with their ideas. They hear and 
inherit phrases, and they have a 
measure of religious life. They 
also use the phrases upon occa- 
sion ; but no one could ever dis- 
cover from a reflection on the 
phrases, and the ordinary secular 
use of language, what the corre- 
sponding experience might be. 
One must gather this from an ac- 
quaintance with the subject mat- 
ter, and with the peculiar forms 
of speech in this field. Here, 
again, we find illustration in the 
brother who says the devil tells 
him to do this or that. No exe- 
gesis of the utterance, according 
to the recognized usage of secular 
speech, would ever reveal that this 
means only that the person feels 
an inclination to some evil deed, 
and ascribes it to the devil as its 
source. Persons in this stage of 



14 The Christian Life 

development are not harmed by 
speech which would be mislead- 
ing to one who sought to under- 
stand it in the ordinary way. 
They do not get any ideas from 
language, but they express the 
ideas they have in the phrases 
which have become conventional 
upon the subject. 

The second class of persons 
who suffer no harm from such 
language consists of those who 
have learned to take the language, 
not for what it seems to say, but 
for what they know it means. 
They understand the picturesque 
phrase, or discount the extrava- 
gant metaphor, or penetrate to the 
meaning behind some grotesque 
or distasteful image, and thus es- 
cape the illusion which might 
otherwise arise. 

But there is a third class less 
fortunate. This consists of per- 
sons who have attained to some 



A Study 15 

measure of reflective conscious- 
ness, but who have not learned to 
distinguish the language of the- 
ology from the language of ex- 
perience. By consequence they 
seek to tell what the religious fact 
should be by reflecting on the 
language they hear used to de- 
scribe it. Only such or such an 
experience would come up to the 
demands of the language , and then 
they seek to have the experience. 
But somehow or other the appro- 
priate experience does not come ; 
and then comes either an attempt 
to believe the actual experience 
is the one desired or else a sus- 
picion that the whole matter is 
fictitious. Not a few good Chris- 
tions have lived on uneasy terms 
with their religious experience on 
this account. They have taken 
the language of theology for the 
language of consciousness, and 
thus have been led to form unwar- 



1 6 The Christian Life 

ranted expectations. My friend, 
who was troubled about the wit- 
ness of the Spirit, had the root of 
his difficulty right here. The 
phrase had led him to expect some 
sort of celestial manifestation, a 
testimony from without, and 
standing so clearly apart from 
the ordinary laws of mental 
movement as to be undeniably 
produced by the manifest God. 
In lack of any such experience, he 
doubted whether he had had the 
witness of the Spirit. This class 
comprises the great mass of 
thoughtful young persons in the 
Churches. And for this class the 
religious teacher needs to bear in 
mind the distinction between the- 
ology and consciousness, in order 
to escape misleading and danger- 
ous confusion. 

The language of theology must 
often be used, indeed, but it 
should be used in such a way as 



A Study 17 

not to mislead the inexperienced 
hearer or reader into an attempt 
to experience theology. And, in 
general, we must remember that 
all ianguage about the inner life 
must be misleading to any one who 
interprets it only by the diction- 
ary. Commonly the language is 
a metaphor, or it has a fixity 
and definiteness which do not be- 
long to the fact. Or it may ex- 
press an ideal toward which we 
strive, but which we never fully 
attain. There is much religious 
speech of this sort. It indicates 
a direction or sets forth an ideal, 
to which we can only approximate. 
The fact itself, however, can be 
learned only in life ; and the lan- 
guage is only an imperfect instru- 
ment for expressing the life. The 
religious teacher can not be too 
careful and discriminating at this 
point. 



1 8 The Christian Life 

Theological Abstractions and 
Living Men 

The second great source of our 
confusion is the mistaking of the 
hard and fast lines and antitheses 
of theological ethics for concrete 
facts among living men. Ethics 
in general tends to fall into this 
error. We speak of the moral 
agent and of responsibility, and 
have fairly clear ideas as to our 
meaning, so long as we remain in 
the field of abstraction. But the 
matter becomes indefinitely more 
complex when we look at actual 
human beings. Then we find 
that we have to deal, not with 
hypothetical and abstract moral 
agents, but with beings in an or- 
der of development where the in- 
tellectual insight, the volitional 
energy and self-control, and the 
moral sensibility have to be de- 
veloped, and where the develop- 



A Study 19 

ment is never complete. This 
complicates the matter indefi- 
nitely; and while our abstract 
ideas are still true as abstractions, 
we see that they have to be greatly 
modified in application. 

The fact appears even more 
prominently in theology. We 
form such antithetical classes as 
saints and sinners, the saved and 
the unsaved; and we fancy that 
living human beings admit of be- 
ing classified in this hard and 
fast way. Of course these abstrac- 
tions are necessary in theoretical 
discussion, and the opposed classes 
are mutually exclusive and con- 
tradictory; nevertheless, concrete 
men, women, and children can 
not be divided off so easily. This 
is a world of growth from irre- 
sponsible ignorance and weakness 
toward responsible power and in- 
sight; it is a world of develop- 
ment from sub-moral and sub- 



20 The Christian Life 

rational beginnings toward moral 
and rational endings. And in 
such a world we must view great 
masses of men as neither saved 
nor lost, but as developing to- 
wards these conditions. They 
are neither good nor bad, in a 
strictly moral sense, but are be- 
coming good or bad. An aca- 
demic ethics and an artificial the- 
ology find no place for them, yet 
they form the bulk of the human 
race. And we shall never reach 
any theory which will satisfy the 
developed moral judgment of men 
until this fact has been recog- 
nized. The human world is less a 
world in which moral classes exist 
than one in which moral classes 
are forming. 

But this is generally overlooked, 
and we divide men into antithet- 
ical classes, as the saved and the 
unsaved. This has generally been 
done from an abstract standpoint ; 



A Study 21 

and abstract law and abstract jus- 
tice and abstract holiness and ab- 
stract sin have played their ab- 
stract part. But after we have 
adopted this division, it becomes 
an important matter to fix the 
standard of distinction. If one is 
not saved, it is a matter of serious 
concern to know the ground of the 
exclusion, particularly as the tra- 
ditional classification by no means 
always runs parallel with our un- 
sophisticated moral judgments. 
In response to this need, theolo- 
gians have given a great variety 
of answers. Those who have lost 
themselves in theological and rit- 
ual mechanism, have found the 
mark of being saved in the due 
performance of some rite, or pro- 
nunciation of some formula ; but 
this removes the matter from the 
moral and rational field altogether. 
The Churches which insist on 
personal piety, tend to fix atten- 



22 The Christian Life 

tion on conversion, or a change of 
heart, or the new birth, as the dis- 
tinctive mark of the saved ; and, 
because of the failure to grasp the 
fact of development, this is com- 
monly supposed to have a definite 
date in time. And in order that 
there be no mistake about a mat- 
ter so important, these Churches 
have sought for unmistakable 
signs of grace which should leave 
no question. This has led to cer- 
tain conceptions of these things 
to which experience must con- 
form, on pain of being distrusted, 
if not rejected, as spurious; and 
this in turn has led to an indefi- 
nite amount of distortion of ex- 
perience in order to bring it up to 
the assumed standard. 

Exaggerated Individualism 

In the imperfect conditions of 
undeveloped men, every good 
thing has its attendant evil, or at 



A Study 23 

least a tendency to develop into 
mistaken forms. A very general 
tendency, even in the Christian 
religion, has been to develop into 
mechanical externalism, in which 
the spirit is missed altogether. 
Ancient Pharisaism is a monu- 
mental example. The same thing 
is seen in the medieval Church ; 
and modern Church history is not 
lacking in illustration. There is 
a tendency to substitute a mechan- 
ical performance of mechanical 
rites for the love and loyalty of 
the heart. Hence, religious re- 
formers have commonly had to 
protest against this tendency, and 
to recall men to the worship of 
the spirit. The Lord looketh at 
the hearth They that worship 
God must worship him in spirit 
and in truth. The prophets of 
the Old Testament had for one 
of their chief burdens the worth- 
lessness of rites and ceremonies, 



24 The Christian Life 

and the necessity of the pure 
heart, if we would secure the Di- 
vine favor. God, who looketh at 
the heart, can never compound 
for spiritual obedience by accept- 
ing anything less. And this has 
been the tone of all succeeding re- 
formers and reformations. Away 
with all salvation by machinery, 
by hearsay, by proxy, and let the 
soul come face to face with God 
in repentance and humility and 
faith ! Only thus can it hope to 
obtain the remission of sins. 

This view certainly represents 
the ideal of spiritual religion ; and 
religious development must be 
looked upon as imperfect, even 
formally, until this stage has been 
reached. And if we were dealing 
with human beings ready-made 
and finished from the start, we 
might conceive that this is the 
only conception to be allowed. 
But the matter is complicated by 



A Study 25 

the fact and form of human de- 
velopment. This spiritual atti- 
tude may be demanded of those 
who have developed far enough 
to understand it; but what of 
those who have not? Are they 
saved or unsaved? 

This question has been the 
source of some extraordinary no- 
tions in theology. The question 
itself arose from a failure to ob- 
serve that development is the law 
of human life; and the notions 
held rested upon factitious ethical 
difficulties, based upon consider- 
ing the problem in an abstract 
forensic way, instead of a concrete 
and truly ethical manner. Some 
theologians of rigor and vigor 
taught the damnation of infants, 
but humanity generally protested 
at this ultra rigor. But how to 
save them was a problem which 
received no single solution. The 
great body of Christians turned 



26 The Christian Life 

baptism into a regenerating rite 
which insured the safety of its 
subjects. One can not make 
much out of this on ethical and 
rational grounds ; but it is inter- 
esting as showing the well-nigh 
universal conviction of the Chris- 
tian world that some way must 
be found of saving the children. 
Those who did not accept this de- 
vice, found or invented others; 
and the same fact was true of 
these — they testified to a good dis- 
position and to the recognition of 
a moral necessity ; but it was ex- 
ceedingly hard to adjust them to 
any ethical and rational scheme. 
In general, here was a problem 
which the religious reformer did 
not always sufficiently consider. 
In assuming responsibility for the 
immature, the Church had made 
some provision for comprehending 
the race as a whole in the scheme 
of salvation; but in so doing, it 



A Study 27 

had also exposed itself to a variety 
of dangers. The Church easily 
came to be looked upon as having 
complete power of attorney in the 
case, so that the individual need 
not appear at all. This readily 
passed into a mechanical concep- 
tion of religion, and a magical 
conception of salvation, in which 
all spirituality disappeared. The 
individual had nothing to do but 
to make arrangements with the 
Church, and the Church would do 
the rest. 

Against such a conception the 
religious reformer rightly revolted. 
What does baptism amount to 
without the spirit? What does 
anything in religion amount to 
without the pure heart? And 
this can not be secured by proxy 
or machinery of any kind. Away 
then, once more, with all such 
matters ! for salvation is a strictly 
individual thing. State Churches 



28 The Christian Life 

were abominations, as their fruits 
clearly showed. The truly spirit- 
ual were to come out from among 
them, and be separate, and thus 
build up a peculiar people, zealous 
of good works. 

All of this was well-meant, and 
all of this had its historical reasons, 
if not its justification. But none 
the less was it one-sided. Of 
course we must reject the mech- 
anism of rite and ceremony as 
anything in which to trust, or 
which can dispense with the de- 
votion of the heart; but we can 
do this and still recognize that 
this mechanism may be a valua- 
ble instrument in forming the 
thought and training the feeling 
of developing men. Of course we 
must reject the notion that the 
Church can forgive sins ; but still 
we may believe that it can declare 
the forgiveness of sins which of it- 
self it can not confer. We must 



A Study 29 

remember that the mass of hu- 
man beings must live by hear- 
say, in religion as well as in most 
other matters; and thus the au- 
thoritative teaching of the Church 
acquires profound significance for 
the religious life of the individ- 
ual. The religious reformer was 
right, but the Churchman was 
right too. The reformer empha- 
sized individualism; and the 
Churchman emphasized solidarity. 
The reformer rightly held that 
the individual must for himself 
recognize and accept the Divine 
will, and that all below this was 
vain if this result was not reached ; 
but the Churchman rightly held 
that the preparatory steps, while 
making nothing perfect, still had 
their religious significance in the 
development of the individual. 
Both views are needed for the full 
expression of the truth ; and if the 
historic circumstances of the time 



30 The Christian Life 

had permitted the reforms to go 
on within the Church, the result 
would have been better for all con- 
cerned. And this is true alike 
for the great Protestant Reforma- 
tion and for minor reformations 
before and since. That both views 
are needed especially appears from 
the struggles of the extreme in- 
dividualists in fixing the begin- 
ning of responsibility. One con- 
siderable body, which would hear 
of nothing but conscious choice 
and self-initiative in religion, offi- 
cially fixed the tender age of eight 
years as the date when adult life 
begins. 

But in their determination to 
have a holy Church, our Noncon- 
formist ancestors decided to have 
only the best ; and this made it 
necessary to draw a sharp line be- 
tween the Church and the world. 
It was heresy to find this in bap- 
tism or any such thing. They 



A Study 31 

knew only too well that baptized 
persons could hold full member- 
ship in the synagogue of Satan. 
And as spirituality was their aim, 
they naturally fixed their atten- 
tion on the religious life, and more 
especially on its assumed begin- 
ning in conversion. And, in or- 
der that there might be no mistake 
about the matter, a deal of atten- 
tion was directed to the signs of 
grace, whereby a sheep might in- 
fallibly be known and separated 
from common goats. This led, in 
New England, under Edwards's 
influence, to much fictitious psy- 
chology and ethics, and to a gen- 
eral browbeating of human nature. 
Our Methodist ancestors tended to 
test conversion by its emotional 
attendants. Other things being 
equal, these will vary with the 
measure of the break between the 
new life and the old. An out- 
breaking sinner, who has been 



32 The Christian Life 

living in violation of all the laws 
of God and man, could not begin 
the new life without a break with 
about all there was in his old life. 
In such a case the fountains of the 
great deep would be broken up 
within him, and there would be 
an intensity of feeling and a man- 
ifest new departure which would 
be lacking, or less obvious, in the 
case of a better man. And as 
Methodism, in its original work, 
dealt largely with persons of this 
class, conversions were largely of 
this type, and they came to be the 
standard to which conversions 
should conform. Such conver- 
sions were said to be clear or pow- 
erful; while others, less marked, 
though admitted, were still open 
to the suspicion of being less thor- 
ough. Every one familiar with 
Methodist revival services knows 
how much of this thing there has 
been among us. 



A Study 33 

Thus we have seen the origin 
and justification of the ideal of 
the individualistic Churches in 
regard to personal religion; and 
we have also seen how much con- 
fusion and uncertainty exist in 
popular thought respecting the 
matter. And the only way out 
of this confusion seems to be to 
get back to our fundamental re- 
ligious conceptions, and from 
them seek to find our way to 
some clearer views of the relig- 
ious life. 

The Essential Point of View 

Religious truth can be ex- 
pressed only by figures borrowed 
from the relations of the life that 
now is. All religious speech, 
then, is based on metaphor, and 
must be taken, not for what it 
says, but for what it means. The 
task of religious thought is to 
3 



34 The Christian Life 

find the meaning in the meta- 
phor, and also to find the meta- 
phor which shall best express the 
meaning. There is a choice in 
metaphors. 

The traditional theological doc- 
trine concerning sin and salvation 
has been largely built on meta- 
phors, taken partly from the rites 
of the ancient temple service and 
partly from governmental, legal, 
and criminal relations. God's re- 
lation to men was generally con- 
ceived, in the obsolescent theology 
of the past, as that of an irrespon- 
sible governor. Men were by na- 
ture criminals, and the theory of 
the mutual relations of God and 
men was based mainly on this 
conception. The notion of the 
governor and his rights was de- 
termined largely by the political 
absolutism of the time, and the 
standing of men was determined 
by the forms of criminal law and 



A Study 35 

criminal procedure. The two to- 
gether produced a most incongru- 
ous compound. The theology was 
bad, and the ethics was worse. 
God, like the king, could do no 
wrong ; and the clay was forbid- 
den to protest at anything the 
potter might do. The infinite ill- 
desert of a sin against an infinite 
being was a favorite contention. 
Guilt was artificial, justice was 
artificial, penalty was artificial, 
salvation was artificial, perdition 
was artificial. There was very 
little in the doctrine concerning 
any of these things that spoke 
clearly and convincingly to the 
reason and conscience of men. 
This general view resulted in con- 
ceiving men as rebels, apostates, 
traitors, and as all deserving im- 
mediate perdition at the hands of 
God. They were by nature chil- 
dren of wrath, and of course un- 
saved. A great many texts, in- 



36 The Christian Life 

terpreted according to the fashion 
of that time, readily lent them- 
selves to such notions. 

But the entire Church has 
grown away from this view, ex- 
cept as a very imperfect and in- 
adequate representation of the 
truth. God may be represented 
as governor, but never with the 
limitations of a human governor, 
and still less with the irresponsi- 
bility of an Oriental ruler. The 
crude devices of criminal law, 
also, which are mainly make- 
shifts for doing as little injustice 
as possible, are never to be ap- 
pealed to as models of divine pro- 
cedure. We are fast displacing 
the entire conception of God as 
governor by the conception of 
God as father; and the concep- 
tion of the divine government 
is giving place to the concep- 
tion of the divine family. The 
deepest thought of God is not 



A Study 37 

that of ruler, but of father; 
and the deepest thought of men 
is not that of subjects, but of 
children. And the deepest 
thought concerning God's pur- 
pose in our life is not salvation 
from threatening danger, but the 
training and development of souls 
as the children of God. Salva- 
tion or redemption is but an in- 
cident or implication of this 
deeper purpose, and must be in- 
terpreted accordingly. The en- 
tire subject must be studied as a 
relation of living moral persons 
rather than of ethical and juristic 
abstractions. 

This new conception of the fa- 
therhood and the family contains 
all that was true in the old concep- 
tion of governor and subject ; but 
it is deeper and more comprehen- 
sive, and hence truer, than the 
old. And in so far as the older 
view conflicts with this, it must 



38 The Christian Life 

be modified or set aside. It may 
be retained as a partial view, or 
as one aspect of the subject, but 
it must always be interpreted in 
accordance with the larger view. 
But, on the other hand, the new 
conception is not to be viewed as 
a sentimental one, or as involving 
a relaxation of the rigor of moral 
demands. 

The training and development 
of souls as the children of God, 
then, is God's essential purpose in 
the creation of men; and we 
must understand our human life 
from this point of view. And we 
must also bear in mind that it is 
an order of development. That 
was not first which was spiritual, 
but that which was natural, and 
afterward that which was spirit- 
ual. The development has a nat- 
ural root as well as a spiritual 
goal. The development also in- 
volves the unfolding of the con- 



A Study 39 



stitutional powers of man as well 
as his abstract spiritual capaci- 
ties. For a long time the devel- 
opment remains on the plane of the 
natural without attaining to the 
consciously spiritual ; but all the 
while it is the development of 
man in a divinely ordered scheme ; 
and all the phases and factors of 
this scheme have their place and 
function in the divine plan for 
men. 

Of course in such a scheme our 
traditional categories of the saved 
and the unsaved can not be ap- 
plied in any hard and fast man- 
ner, but must be limited to a rel- 
ative significance. They have a 
value in abstract theory, and they 
may express a limit toward which 
men are tending, but they can 
not be rigorously applied to the 
rank and file of the race. As 
said before, men are not so much 
saved as they are becoming 



4-0 The Christian Life 

saved ; and men are not so much 
lost as they are becoming lost. 
The process is going on; the 
classes are forming; but we are 
totally unable to form any fixed 
classification of these living men 
and women about us. The vari- 
ous traditional tests are grotesque 
in their inadequacy, when they 
are not purely mechanical and 
non-moral. 

Human beings are carried on 
in the beginnings of their exist- 
ence as unconsciously as nature 
itself. They are borne along like 
the rocks and the trees, the earth 
and the stars, without any sense 
of the will and the purpose which 
underlie their motion. But it is 
God's thought for men that they 
shall not always be borne along 
thus unconsciously, but shall be- 
come aware of God's presence and 
purpose in their lives, and shall 
reverently recognize the presence, 



A Study 41 

and filially accept and co-operate 
with the purpose. They are to 
pass from the unconsciousness of 
nature and the ignorance of child- 
hood to the conscious recognition 
and acceptance of the Divine will ; 
and then they are to go on with 
God in deepening sympathy and 
growing fellowship forever. 

This is God's eternal thought 
for men, and it is not modified in 
any way in its essential nature by 
the fact of sin. Of course, a deal 
of what we call sin is error and 
mistake, arising from the igno- 
rance of men who have to feel 
their way. And sin itself, as we 
find it among men, is largely the 
willfulness of freedom which has 
not learned self-control, rather 
than any deliberate choice of evil. 
Ignorance and untrained willful- 
ness abound, and both alike must 
be removed, or they will increase 
and lead to disaster. Ignorance 



42 The Christian Life 

must be enlightened if men are 
ever to find the way. The un- 
chastened will must learn self- 
restraint if it is to run at large. 
But during the process we must 
not indulge in extravagant con- 
demnation by bringing in the 
categories of abstract theological 
ethics. These have as little ap- 
plication to the case as they would 
have to the judgment of the fam- 
ily life. 

This reference to the family 
gives us a hint of how developing 
beings are to be judged. The 
father's desire is, that the chil- 
dren shall come to recognize his 
love and filially to accept his com- 
mands. He desires that they shall 
develop into sympathy and fellow- 
ship with himself ; and not until 
this stage is reached is the devel- 
opment complete. But in the 
meantime the children belong to 
the family, and have immeasur- 



A Study 43 

able value for the father's heart. 
They know little or nothing of 
the love that is lavished upon 
them; but it is there, neverthe- 
less, and by it they are upborne 
and carried along. The parents 
have patience with the ignorance, 
the irresponsiveness, the willful- 
ness, knowing that time and dis- 
cipline and some experience of life 
are necessary to bring the children 
to any proper knowledge of them- 
selves and of their duties. Mean- 
while the wise parent is not unduly 
distressed at childish imperfection. 
He knows it is to be expected and 
must be borne with. He knows, 
too, that it is nothing very serious 
in itself — it is serious only in its 
tendencies ; and he avails himself 
of all the means of discipline, of 
instruction, of correction, to pre- 
vent the evil tendencies from be- 
ing realized. But he would re- 
gard it as in the highest degree 



44 The Christian Life 

false and abominable if one should 
claim that the little rebellions of 
childhood forfeit membership in 
the family. Children can not re- 
bel to this extent. Their igno- 
rance and general lack of insight 
make it impossible. What might 
be possible with angels, we can 
not tell. What doom should fol- 
low rebellion committed in the 
full light of knowledge and with 
full insight into its evil nature, 
might be hard to say. But hu- 
man life is not of this sort, and 
can not be treated in this way. 
Such discussion must be limited 
to treatises on the sin of the devil 
and his angels ; it has no applica- 
tion to human conditions. 

But we are sinners. Yes, but 
not outcasts. But we are rebels. 
No, we are prodigal sons. And 
God's grace is such that his es- 
sential will for us remains un- 
changed, that we should become 



A Study 45 

aware of his loving purpose for 
us, and should accept it in filial 
submission, and work together 
with him in building up his king- 
dom among men. And this, too, 
we understand from the side of 
the family again. The supreme de- 
sireof the prodigal's father was that 
the prodigal should come home to 
him, the father ; and the supreme 
duty of the prodigal was to go 
home in the spirit of penitence, 
and devote himself to doing his 
father's will. And we, as prod- 
igal sons of our Heavenly Father, 
have the same all-inclusive duty. 
How the forgiveness of sin is 
made possible has been the sub- 
ject of much theory, largely ab- 
stract and often unedifying. In 
fact, there is no completely satis- 
factory theory on the subject, sup- 
posing any theory is needed. We 
find various conceptions given in 
the Scriptures, which are mutu- 



46 The Christian Life 

ally inconsistent when taken in 
strict literalness, and some of 
which would be immoral. This 
shows that they are not to be 
taken literally, but must be viewed 
as adumbrations* of the truth; not 
the truth itself, but ways of put- 
ting it. And these views are to be 
understood psychologically rather 
than logically ; as expressions of 
life rather than as statutory enact- 
ments. Taken in the former way, 
they are full of significance and 
truth; taken in the latter way, 
they become mechanical, irra- 
tional, and pernicious. But in 
any case, this question belongs to 
theology, and not to religious ex- 
perience. However it may be 
brought about, or whatever hid- 
den mystery there may lie in the 
Divine nature, the one thing we 
have to proclaim is the grace of 
God, the forgiveness of sins, the 
Divine help for all those who truly 



A Study 47 

seek it The revelation of God in 
Christ is essentially a revelation 
of his grace and his gracious dis- 
position toward us. He has sent 
his Son to proclaim this, and to 
put it beyond alt doubt forever. 
The Father's heart yearns after 
the prodigal children ; and all that 
we have to do is to come home in 
penitence and humility, trusting 
in his mercy and seeking to do 
his will. Whatever is more than 
this belongs to theology, and may 
possibly be important in that field. 
But the prodigal's duty is to go 
home; and for this he needs no 
theory of the atonement, no doc- 
trine of substitution, or of imputed 
righteousness, or of ransom paid 
to the devil, or of governmental 
exigencies happily provided for; 
but solely the desire to find the 
Father's help and favor and for- 
giveness. And this conception of 
God, as full of grace and compas- 



48 The Christian Life 

sion, as ready to forgive the peni- 
tent soul, and to give it power to 
become the child of God in the 
spirit, is the central idea of the 
gospel. 

If these things are so, then the 
essential matter of Christian teach- 
ing is simplified. God's aim is to 
bring men to the recognition of 
his presence and purpose in their 
lives and to a filial acceptance of 
that purpose in all their conduct. 
If men are ignorant of that pur- 
pose, we must teach them. If 
they ignore it, or turn away from 
it, we must warn them. If they 
seek after God, we must declare 
his infinite nearness and his gra- 
cious condescension. If they 
turn from their evil ways, we 
must proclaim the forgiveness of 
sins. The whole matter will be 
clear if we bear in mind what 
God's purpose is for men. And 
the duty of the inquirer is equally 



A Study 49 

plain. Let him at once begin to do 
the will of God so far as he knows 
it, trusting in the Divine mercy for 
the forgiveness of sin and for all 
needed help. Let the wicked for- 
sake his way and the unrighteous 
man his thoughts; and let him 
return unto the Lord, and he will 
have mercy upon him ; and to our 
God, for he will abundantly par- 
don. But, on the other hand, if 
I regard iniquity in my heart, the 
Lord will not hear me; and he 
ought not to hear me. 

What, then, does God require 
of us ? Various answers are given, 
all of which come to the same 
thing. An old prophet found the 
requirement in doing justly, lov- 
ing mercy, and walking humbly 
with God. Loving submission 
and active obedience to the will of 
God, is another formula. Seek 
to live so as to please God in all 
things, is still another. Believe 
4 



50 The Christian Life 

on the Lord Jesus Christ — that is, 
become his disciple and follower — 
is another. But they all mean 
the same thing. We are not re- 
quired to have affecting views of 
our sins, or a sense of our deep un- 
worthiness, or an insight into the- 
ology of any sort, but we are re- 
quired to surrender ourselves to 
God to do his will. 

But we are not yet converted, 
or born again, or saved. * What 
has been said thus far smacks of 
legality and good works, and seems 
to make nothing of faith and the 
new birth and the witness of the 
Spirit ; and these things are the 
very gist of spiritual religion. 

In this objection we have an al- 
most complete list of the confu- 
sion and misunderstandings which 
have darkened the discussion of 
this subject We must consider 
them singly. 



A Study 51 



Underlying this objection there 
is a secret reference to the theol- 
ogy of abstraction. Abstract law 
and abstract justice are supposed 
to have claims upon us which 
must be met before we can be- 
come children of God ; and surely 
our thought of conversion must 
largely concern itself with these. 
But here we must again remind 
ourselves that these questions be- 
long to speculative theology and 
not to experience. If we were 
giving a philosophy of Christian 
doctrine, these questions might 
come up; but they are out of 
place when we are preaching the 
gospel. And we must further re- 
mind ourselves that the claims, 
whatever they may be, have been 
met; and the difficulties, what- 
ever they may be, have been re- 
moved ; so that we have to con- 
sider only the practical aspects of 
Christian doctrine. We turn over 



52 The Christian Life 

the speculative and philosophical 
questions to the theologian, and 
continue to occupy ourselves with 
the practical life. 

Working Definitions 

There are many important the- 
ological terms and phrases which, 
from long use and thoughtlessness, 
have worn so smooth as to have 
lost most of their meaning ; and the 
only way to restore them to signifi- 
cance seems to be to look directly 
at the facts from which the terms 
arise. Proceeding in this way, we 
discover that there is a vast deal 
of wrong thinking in the world, 
not merely erroneous thinking as 
in speculative matters, but wrong 
practical thinking. Men see 
things out of their right relations. 
They misjudge values and invert 
their relative importance. They 
have their minds full of these 
misconceptions, and practical con- 



A Study 53 

fusion and misdirection result. 
Hence the first condition of a new 
and better life is to repent ; that 
is, men must change their minds 
or their ways of thinking about 
things. This is the Christian, or 
New Testament, idea of repent- 
ance ; and this is the first condition 
for entering into the kingdom of 
God. It is not a question of get- 
ting to heaven, but of entering into 
that kingdom which is righteous- 
ness and peace and joy in the Holy 
Ghost ; and, of course, no one can 
enter this kingdom except by at- 
taining to the spirit, the temper, 
the way of thinking, in which 
the kingdom consists. 

Again, men are traveling the 
wrong road or in the wrong di- 
rection. They are moving away 
from life and from the highest 
things. They are on the down- 
ward grade. Hence they must 
be converted; that is, must turn 



54 The Christian Life 

around, if they would enter into 
life. This is the New Testament 
idea of conversion ; and this is not 
to be understood in a metaphysical 
sense, as implying some change in 
the substance of the soul ; nor in 
a theological sense, as implying 
some difficult forensic adjustment 
in the court of heaven whereby 
the antithesis of justice and mercy 
is happily mediated. It is to be 
understood solely as implying the 
opposition between the contents 
and direction of the new life and 
those of the old. 

In the same way the new birth 
is to be understood. If we con- 
sider the contents of the earthly 
life, its low aims and maxims — 
and hence its opposition to the 
life of the Spirit — we see that the 
change required for passing into 
the spiritual life is very strikingly 
called a new birth, or a birth 
from above. St. Paul called it a 



A Study 55 

resurrection from the dead. Both, 
expressions mean the same thing, 
and both are equally metaphor- 
ical. They are to be understood 
from the side of life, and not from 
the side of theology. When thus 
understood, they are striking and 
expressive; but when they are 
taken for a hidden metaphysical 
process, they lose all intelligible 
meaning, and become an opaque 
theological wonder. Without 
doubt the Holy Spirit must as- 
sist us in our efforts. The weak 
will must be strengthened, the 
dull conscience must be enlight- 
ened, the wayward affections must 
be fixed ; and in all this we need 
the co-working of God. But we 
always need this. And whatever 
mystery may attach thereto, its 
effect for us, and the only intelli- 
gible meaning we can ascribe to 
it, must consist in the turning of 
heart and will toward God, in the 



56 The Christian Life 

set purpose to please and to serve 
him. 

The same thing must be said 
of salvation or being saved. This 
also is to be ethically understood. 
What may be possible in the way 
of a forensic understanding, we 
leave to theologians to decide; 
but in any case, salvation must 
be ethically understood, or we are 
landed in artificial hocus-pocus, if 
not in downright immorality. To 
be sure, St. Paul used the terms 
of the Roman law very freely to 
set forth the great salvation, and 
in this has generally been fol- 
lowed by Protestant theologians. 
But it has long been apparent 
that these terms are not to be 
taken in a rigid literal sense. 
They must be seen as metaphors 
or ways of putting, and must be 
interpreted from the side of the 
moral life, and not by the dic- 
tionary alone. To love God and 



A Study 57 

to seek to serve and please him 
is the sum of human duty, and it 
is forever incredible that God 
should demand any more or be 
satisfied with any less. The Di- 
vine aim is to bring men into 
the loving recognition and accept- 
ance of the Divine will. For- 
giveness by the Heavenly Father 
is no more difficult than forgive- 
ness by an earthly father, and in 
both cases what is desired is the 
establishment of the filial spirit 
in the heart and will of the way- 
ward child. And this is salva- 
tion in the ethical sense, and the 
only salvation with which we 
have any practical concern. Sal- 
vation conceived as something 
possessed by one and not pos- 
sessed by another of similar spirit 
and life, or conceived as depend- 
ing on some device of celestial 
bookkeeping, or as depending on 
the performance of some rite or 



58 The Christian Life 

the utterance of some formula, 
has no moral contents at all, but 
sinks to the level of magical in- 
cantations.. 

This matter of salvation and 
forgiveness has often been con- 
fused, even by the theologians, 
from failure to view it as a rela- 
tion of moral persons. In their 
desire to save justice, they have 
sometimes become so confused as 
to represent justice as demanding 
a certain quantum of penalty, but 
quite indifferent as to who fur- 
nished or endured it. This is a 
most striking illustration of the 
confusion which may be wrought 
by a devotion to abstractions. 
When it is a question only of 
things, one person may take an- 
other's place, as when one pays 
another's debt ; but when it is a 
question of moral persons and 
moral relations, such substitution 
is morally impossible in any lit- 



A Study 59 

eral sense. Imagine an ungrate- 
ful son who should demand that 
his father should receive him into 
all the privileges and affection of 
the family because some one else 
had performed the duties which 
the son had neglected or rejected. 
The father who could tolerate so 
odious a demand must himself be 
hopelessly confused mentally, or 
else indifferent to moral distinc- 
tions and proprieties. Plainly, 
the only salvation the moral na- 
ture can recognize is one which 
results in the re-establishment of 
the filial spirit and the filial life. 
The truth in the traditional doc- 
trine on this subject is, that not 
even love can arbitrarily forgive 
or cancel consequences. This 
would make forgiveness itself im- 
moral. The curse can be removed 
only by changing the heart, and 
setting healing and restorative 
agencies at work, by which the 



60 The Christian Life 

evil consequences may be elim- 
inated, as health overcomes dis- 
ease. But this, which is the es- 
sential truth of the atonement, is 
often hidden behind abstractions 
which caricature or deny it. 

But what of the supernatural 
in the religious life? We have 
spoken of men changing their 
minds and converting themselves, 
whereas they supremely need the 
aid of the Holy Spirit in this 
work. These reflections will nat- 
urally occur to those who fail to 
distinguish between the theolog- 
ical standpoint and that of con- 
scious experience. But what we 
have said involves no denial of 
the supernatural. Without doubt 
men need help from above in ef- 
fecting these changes, but no more 
than they need it in the spiritual 
life in general. But however 
much supernatural assistance may 
be needed, the thing to be reached 



A Study 6 1 

is the changed mind and heart, 
or the change of thought and feel- 
ing and direction of life. And 
the supernatural reveals itself in 
this power to become the children 
of God, and not at all in any 
scenic or hippodromic manifesta- 
tions. In the former sense we 
affirm the supernatural with all 
conviction. And the religious 
teacher must not allow ignorant 
and excitable persons to mistake 
neurological disturbances, without 
any ethical contents, for manifes- 
tations of the Spirit. Untrained 
persons, of wonder-loving mental 
habit, easily fall into this mis- 
take, and they must be guarded 
against it. 

And from this concrete ethical 
standpoint, again, the meaning of 
sin and the sinful life is equally 
clear. The gist of the sinful life 
consists in the willingness to do 
wrong and the unwillingness to do 



62 The Christian Life 

right. Some dealers in abstrac- 
tions have thought to find some- 
thing deeper than this, and they 
have proclaimed that sin is a na- 
ture, and that its nature is guilt. 
With such notions, nothing but a 
web of abstract fictions can be 
woven. And others, who have 
rejected this view, have often been 
so occupied with denying the ex- 
istence of any abstract sin that 
they have overlooked the undeni- 
able fact that there is a good deal 
of concrete wrong-doing among 
men, and that this wrong-doing 
must be done away with if men 
are to enter into life. It would 
tend to real progress if religious 
teachers would postpone the study 
of sin in the abstract until we 
have overcome this willingness to 
do wrong and this unwillingness 
to do right, from which both so- 
ciety and the individual so griev- 



A Study 63 

ously suffer. If this state of mind 
could be replaced by the love 
and practice of righteousness, we 
should have no practical concern 
about abstract sin. 

Faith and works have been re- 
ferred to, and salvation by faith 
has been mentioned as all-impor- 
tant. But here, too, confusion 
has reigned. This antithesis of 
faith and works owes its exist- 
ence to a very low and crude 
moral conception. When works 
are mechanically conceived, as in 
ancient or modern Pharisaism, it 
is plain that they remain external 
to the spirit and count for noth- 
ing. No amount of them could 
have any significance for the spir- 
itual development of soul. But 
when it is seen that good works, 
in any ethical sense of the phrase, ■ 
involve as their supreme condi- 
tion the inner loyalty and devo- 



64 The Christian Life 

tion of heart and will, we see 
that there is no reason to be 
afraid of them. 

Again, when the moral ideal 
is at all developed, there is no 
satisfaction in any actual attain- 
ment of our own ; for the ideal 
is ever in advance and rebukes 
us. Hence no one of any spir- 
itual attainment can ever reach 
peace through any good works of 
his own, but only by trusting in 
the infinite grace above him. 
We are perfectly clear that our 
salvation is of grace, not of debt ; 
it is not of works, lest any man 
should boast; it is not of our- 
selves, it is the gift of God. As 
the child has its standing in the 
famMy, not by the value of its 
services, but rather in and through 
the parental love which gives 
value to all the child does, so we 
have our standing in the divine 
family, not through the value of 



A Study 65 

our services, but rather and only 
through the infinite grace which 
gives all the value our poor best 
service may possess. This is that 
salvation by grace which is the 
glory of the gospel. And our 
trust in this grace, our yield- 
ing ourselves up to it in obedience 
and submission, is our faith. 
And that we can be truly saved — 
that is, lifted Godward — only in 
this way, is manifest. No me- 
chanical round can lift us. No me- 
chanical round has merit. We 
must trust in the grace above us, 
and we must struggle toward the 
ideal it holds out. Only thus can 
we rise. However we stumble or 
fall, we must not abandon our 
trust in, and devotion to, the 
grace revealed from on high. 
Understood in this way, salvation 
by faith is one of the deepest 
truths in religion. But when 
faith is conceived as a bare as- 
5 



66 The Christian Life 

sent to any theological dogma 
whatever, it becomes unfruitful 
and mechanical, and sometimes 
immoral and pernicious. 

We have made this excursion 
into theology because the phrases 
examined constantly recur in the 
language of experience, and give 
it a peculiar form. Our convic- 
tion is, that these phrases are 
largely misunderstood from tak- 
ing the implied metaphor for a 
literal fact, or from interpreting 
them by the dictionary instead of 
by life. But however this may 
be, it is clear that the theological 
doctrine concerning these matters 
must not be confused with the 
data of conscious experience. 
Whatever mysterious God-ward 
relations these doctrines may 
have is no practical concern of 
ours, and will doubtless be ar- 
ranged for without our aid. For 
the consciousness of the disciple, 



A Study 67 

nothing is to be demanded or ex- 
pected beyond the surrender, the 
devotion, the obedience, of the 
filial spirit. Theology is good, 
important, and even necessary in 
its place; but we do not bring 
men to God by means of theology. 
Nor should we confuse the mind 
of any seeker after God by trying 
to cast his thought and experi- 
ence in any dogmatic mold ; as if 
one could not find God without 
setting forth a scheme of evan- 
gelical theology, duly recognizing 
the several persons of the Trinity 
and their respective offices, speci- 
fying the provisions of the atone- 
ment, and going in order through 
the program of repentance, faith, 
justification, regeneration, adop- 
tion, and sanctification. What- 
ever value such a program may 
have is theological, not psycho- 
logical ; it represents abstractions 
of theory rather than facts of con- 



68 The Christian Life 

sciousness. The two points of 
view should never be confounded. 
The life of trust and obedience 
is not to be secured by an exam- 
ination in the catechism ; and for 
bringing sinners into the king- 
dom of God, we need no more 
theology than is contained in the 
Parable of the Prodigal Son. 

The Witness of the Spirit 

In our previous study we have 
distinguished the language of ex- 
perience from that of theology, 
and have warned against con- 
founding them. But now we 
come to the witness of the Spirit ; 
and this is said to be a fact of 
experience, and not merely a doc- 
trine of theology. And it is fur- 
ther said by many that no one 
may count himself a true disciple, 
or member of the divine house- 
hold, until he has received this 



A Study 69 

witness. And many good persons 
— some of the best indeed — have 
been greatly troubled thereby. 
The phrase seems to call for 
a miraculous manifestation, in 
which some external power stands 
manifestly apart from ourselves, 
and testifies that we are received 
into the Divine favor. And many 
persons, like the minister before 
mentioned, have watched and 
waited for some such manifesta- 
tion, and as nothing has ever hap- 
pened to them which contained 
any such psychological break, or 
which revealed any such appari- 
tion of another personality within 
the field of consciousness, they 
are left to doubt whether they 
ever had the witness of the Spirit. 
And as this witness is supposed 
to be a necessary mark of disci- 
pleship, they are left in doubt 
whether they are members of the 
divine family at all. There is 



70 The Christian Life 

special need of clearing up our 
thought on this subject. 

Two considerations must be 
premised: One is, that the doc- 
trine, whatever it may be, must 
not be held in such a way as to 
make void the gospel. The other 
is, that the experience, whatever 
it may be, can not be confined to 
any single religious body. 

The first point is by no means 
always regarded. That one should 
commit himself in faith and obe- 
dience to the keeping and service 
of the Lord Jesus, is not thought 
to be enough. That one should 
enter upon the life of disciple- 
ship, trusting in the promises of 
the gospel and seeking to do God's 
will, would not suffice. One might 
do all this, and still have no right 
to assume the place of a son in 
the Father's house. For this he 
must wait until he receives the 
witness; and the result often is, 



A Study 71 

that the object of faith and trust 
is not Christ and the Father whom 
he revealed, but rather and only 
certain feelings in the disciple. 
If these are present, he has confi- 
dence ; if absent, he has not found 
the Lord, or the Lord has hidden 
his face. Thus the gospel itself 
is made void by thrusting some 
subjective test between the soul 
and its Savior, the only object of 
faith and trust. 

And that this is no fictitious 
danger appears from the follow- 
ing utterance of a distinguished 
Methodist ecclesiastic the past 
summer: "John Wesley was sent 
out to preach a knowable relig- 
ion — that a man might know that 
his sins are forgiven. There is 
only one way for him to learn 
that. Pardon is a change in the 
Divine mind concerning the sin- 
ner; whereas God regarded him 
as a guilty sinner, he now regards 



72 The Christian Life 

him as a pardoned sinner. No one 
but God knows this change till 
he tells it. This is the old doc- 
trine of the witness of the Spirit. 
When we get a man down before 
the altar, we do not tell him his 
sins are forgiven. We do not 
know. We simply hold him to 
it till God tells him; then the 
sinner knows it." 

According to this master in 
Israel, then, it would seem that 
we may not venture on or rest in 
the promises of God without this 
special experience. We may in- 
deed commit ourselves to his serv- 
ice in faith and obedience, trust- 
ing in his mercy; but we may 
not have any confidence that our 
Heavenly Father accepts us even 
then, because we can not tell 
what takes place in the Divine 
mind. This is a heresy from 
every standpoint, Scriptural and 
Methodistic alike. Wesley him- 



A Study 73 

self expressly rejected this inter- 
pretation of the doctrine. 

Since I began writing, I have 
had a concrete illustration of the 
mischief of such indiscriminating 
teaching. A ministerial corre- 
spondent tells me of a woman of 
more than ordinary intelligence 
in his congregation, who for nine- 
teen years wandered in a horror 
of great darkness because of such 
erroneous teaching. She had been 
told: "Do n't take anybody's word. 
When you are forgiven, you will 
know it. God will tell you." Al- 
most the exact language, it will 
be observed, of the dignitary be- 
fore mentioned. 

And the second point men- 
tioned must also be borne in 
mind. The witness of the Spirit 
as an experience of the Christian 
can not be limited to any relig- 
ious body. Conceived as a doc- 
trine, it might well be held by a 



74 The Christian Life 

single body; but conceived as an 
experience, it must be the com- 
mon property of all saints, so far 
as it is necessary to saintship. 
It would be grotesque to the last 
degree to suppose that God does 
something for Methodist saints 
which he does not do for Baptist, 
or Congregational, or Presbyte- 
rian saints; and it would be an 
impossible lack of charity to hold 
that only Methodists are saints. 
Most religious bodies have a few 
disciples of rigor and vigor who 
work out a sort of high-church- 
ism for their own people, and 
question the discipleship of other 
bodies; but no sane Methodist 
would venture to construct his 
high-churchism on this line of 
the witness. And this fact shows 
either that the doctrine must be 
a theological one and not a datum 
of experience, or else that the ex- 
perience itself, whatever it may 



A Study 75 

be, is not so definite as to exclude 
varying interpretations. 

Returning now to the doctrine, 
we find theologians very uncer- 
tain about it. There is general 
agreement that it is most impor- 
tant, but there is little agreement 
as to what it means. That the 
phrase itself is not to be taken 
in strict literalness is manifest. 
No outside being appears within 
the disciple's consciousness and 
literally testifies to a celestial fact 
concerning his standing in the 
court of heaven. This is what 
our traditional language would 
lead us to expect, but there is no 
warrant for such expectation. The 
phrase itself as used by Paul in 
the classical passage — Romans 
viii, 1 6 — seems to grow out of the 
ancient custom of adoption. Paul 
is trying to make his readers 
know the grace and wonder of 
the great salvation, and avails 



76 The Christian Life 

himself of all the aids which fa- 
miliar customs of society furnish. 
Among others he hits upon the 
custom of adoption familiar to 
the ancient world, and says : We 
are not aliens and strangers, but 
we are adopted into the divine 
family. God has sent forth into 
our hearts the Spirit of adop- 
tion whereby the filial spirit is 
wrought in us and we are en- 
abled to look up to God as our Fa- 
ther. And having taken up this 
striking and suggestive figure, his 
thought runs on to complete it. 
For this act of adoption was not 
done in a corner and out of sight, 
but in public and before witnesses, 
that there might be no question 
about it forever after. And with 
this thought he adds: And the 
Spirit itself, that same Spirit of 
adoption, is a fellow-witness with 
our spirits^ not to our spirits, but 
a fellow-witness of the fact that 



A Study 77 

we are children of God. If Paul 
had not been familiar with Ro- 
man law, there would have been 
no doctrine of adoption and no 
doctrine of the witness. 

It is not now a question of what 
the work of the Spirit within or 
upon the soul may be, or what 
the function of the Spirit may be 
in the regeneration and sanctifi- 
cation of men. It may be the 
Spirit which works in us the filial 
mind and heart, which is the es- 
sential meaning of adoption. But 
these are theological questions, 
with which we have no present 
concern. We inquire only what 
the witness of the Spirit may 
mean as an event in the conscious 
experience of believers. And it 
is plain that this can be decided 
only by experience, and not by 
lexicons and dictionaries. No ety- 
mological analysis of a metaphor 
will reveal its meaning. 



78 The Christian Life 

The uncertainty of theological 
thought on this subject is largely 
due to the perennial confusion of 
the standpoints of theology and 
consciousness; and the aberra- 
tions are due to the attempt to 
construct the doctrine as a matter 
of experience by analyzing the 
metaphor. The distinction be- 
tween the direct and the indirect 
witness illustrates the uncertainty. 
The latter is an inference from 
the discerned presence of the 
fruits of the Spirit; but this is 
not thought to exhaust the doc- 
trine. According to Wesley, the 
direct witness of the Spirit is 
"an inward impression upon the 
souls of believers whereby the 
Spirit of God directly testifies to 
their spirits that they are children 
of God." This seems to be clear, 
but it is not. If the "inward im- 
pression n is produced by God, yet 
so that God himself does not ap- 



A Study 79 

pear in any supernatural mani- 
festation, then we have a theolog- 
ical doctrine concerning the source 
of the impression ; but the witness 
is indirect. We have no super- 
nal manifestation, but the heart 
is "strangely warmed." But Mr. 
Wesley does not seem to have 
been willing to affirm any miracu- 
lous appearance, but only the con- 
viction wrought in us by the Spirit 
that we are the children of God ; 
and this leaves us, so far as the 
Spirit is concerned, with a theo- 
logical doctrine rather than a fact 
of consciousness. An experience 
wrought in us by the Spirit is 
one thing. An experience in 
which the Spirit is a factor of 
our consciousness may be quite 
another. 

Wesley's uncertainty on this 
point comes out clearly in the se- 
ries of letters to Mr. John Smith 
where this question is discussed. 



80 The Christian Life 

The person who writes under the 
name of John Smith presses for 
a definition of the doctrine, and 
especially seeks to know whether 
the experience involves any su- 
pernatural or miraculous mani- 
festation. Wesley is embarrassed 
by the insistence, and finally falls 
back on the statement that he holds 
the doctrine because it is revealed 
in the Scriptures — a fact which 
shows that he had not clearly dis- 
tinguished between the doctrine 
as a truth of theology and as a 
fact of consciousness. There is 
no need to fall back on the Scrip- 
tures for proof of anything which 
we immediately experience. He 
also admits elsewhere that he has 
known a few good persons who 
do not seem to have had the wit- 
ness. Nevertheless, it is a doc- 
trine of Scripture, and must be 
maintained on that ground. But 
by this time we have a phrase 



A Study 81 

which we feel bound to use rather 
than a doctrine which we under- 
stand. At all events, it is not an 
experience which can be made a 
test of discipleship ; for good per- 
sons exist who have not had it. 
Returning now to life, the 
Christian fact is this: The sin- 
cere and continued attempt to be 
disciples of Christ results in the 
conviction that we are in the 
right way, that we are on the 
Lord's side and he is on our side : 
and this conviction grows from 
more to more as the life broadens 
and deepens. The new life takes 
firmer hold and strikes deeper 
root ; and as the soul grows in 
grace and the knowledge of the 
truth, this life becomes more and 
more rooted in the conviction of 
its divine origin. Under the in- 
fluence of Christian teaching, the 
believer will adjust his experi- 
ence to the forms of Christian 
6 



82 The Christian Life 

thought and doctrine ; and as we 
view the Spirit as the immediate 
agent in the purification, sancti- 
fication, and upbuilding of the 
soul, we naturally come to re- 
gard our graces, or strength, or 
joy, our peace, our rest in God, 
as wrought in us by the Spirit, as 
the marks of his presence, as the 
witness he perpetually bears in 
us to our being children of God. 
And this is all the witness of the 
Spirit means in general. What 
peculiar manifestations it may 
please God to make in certain 
crises of life or moments of spir- 
itual exaltation, or what revela- 
tions he may make to particular 
persons, we may not decide ; but 
such things are not to be de- 
manded of any one as conditions 
or marks of sonship. For the 
great body of believers the fact 
of experience will be what we have 
described. If any claim that they 



A Study 83 

have had more abundant manifes- 
tations, we do not deny that it 
may be so. At the same time we 
reserve the right to apply to all 
such claims the supreme test : By 
their fruits ye shall know them. 
If, as often happens, these alleged 
manifestations are accompanied 
by no increase of moral and relig- 
ious effectiveness, they will have 
no practical significance ; and if, 
as is sometimes the case, the re- 
ceivers of the alleged manifesta- 
tions are not remarkable for men- 
tal force and moral character, 
there will be good ground for 
thinking that thev have misheard 
the voices. 

If it be said that the witness as 
thus described is no witness but 
only an inference, the answer is, 
that the meaning of a doctrine 
can not be fixed by analyzing a 
metaphor, and that this is the 
only witness which it pleases God 



84 The Christian Life 

to give to most of his children. 
But when the doctrine is so under- 
stood as to subordinate even our 
faith in Christ and his gospel to 
some form of emotional experi- 
ence, it becomes a pestilent her- 
esy. We are not called to have 
experiences, or witnesses, or man- 
ifestations of any sort, but to be 
followers of Jesus. Whatever ex- 
periences of joy or peace or aspi- 
ration may come in this life of 
discipleship are to be welcomed, 
but they are never to be erected 
into tests of salvation. 

In fact, this doctrine of the wit- 
ness of the Spirit in our Church 
is to be historically rather than 
exegetically or psychologically 
understood. We gather its his- 
torical meaning from the errors 
against which the founders of 
Methodism aimed their protest. 
These were twofold. On the one 
hand, the State Church had largely 



A Study 85 

fallen a prey to sacerdotalism and 
religious mechanism. What with 
baptismal regeneration and sacra- 
mentarianism, the masses of its 
adherents had fallen into the no- 
tion that the Church would look 
after their salvation; and thus 
they failed to attain to any per- 
sonal piety. In opposition to all 
this, the Methodist fathers sum- 
moned men to heart religion, set- 
ting forth the worthlessness of 
forms, rites, proxies, and insisting 
that every one should for himself 
experience the grace of God in 
the soul. To the hearsay and 
magic of baptismal regeneration, 
and the mechanism of rites and 
institutions, they opposed the self- 
evidencing life of the Spirit. 

Again, at that time both the 
State and the Nonconforming 
Churches were largely under the 
influence of Calvinistic doctrine, 
and also of the notion that relig- 



86 The Christian Life 

ion is pre-eminently a matter of 
orthodox belief. The Calvinistic 
teaching concerning the persever- 
ance of the saints made it morally 
unsafe to teach a doctrine of as- 
surance ; and the heresy of ortho- 
doxy tended to reduce religion to 
a barren intellectual assent to no- 
tional dogmas. In addition, God's 
goodness was so limited in any 
case, and the outlook for man was 
so grim, that there was little room 
or reason for joy in religion. 

Against all these errors our 
fathers protested. For them, re- 
ligion must be more than a ma- 
chinery of rites and sacraments, 
and more than correctness of be- 
lief. It was no hearsay matter, 
but a conscious life, which found 
its great witness in itself. They 
also denied with all vehemence 
the Calvinistic conception of God 
and his government, and thus 
made love and joy possible once 



A Study 87 

more. And to express this con- 
viction of life at first hand, and 
this joy in the Lord, they very 
naturally fell back on the witness 
of the Spirit. In the circum- 
stances of the time it was prac- 
tically a new doctrine, or a redis- 
covery of an old one. But the 
essential thing in it was the denial 
of the Calvinistic nightmare, the 
emphasis on personal religion, and 
the spiritual assurance which 
arises in the life of faith and 
obedience. This was historically 
the essential meaning and strength 
of the doctrine, and this it was 
that kept it sane and sweet. It 
was mainly a practical doctrine, 
and it was only under polemical 
stress that it ran off into doubt- 
ful exegesis and into theological 
and metaphysical interpretations. 
Thus the doctrine became promi- 
nent in our Church, and while 
thus practically held, it was true 



88 The Christian Life 

and fundamental. The attempt 
to give it a theoretical standing 
was rather confusing than other- 
wise. The multitudinous experi- 
ences of joy, and even of emo- 
tional excitement, were gathered 
up into the doctrine; and all 
these were accepted as the witness 
of the Spirit, because that was 
the way in which we regarded the 
matter. Nowadays more discrim- 
ination is needed ; but the essen- 
tial contention of the fathers must 
never be lost sight of, that per- 
sonal religion is the ideal of re- 
ligious training and development, 
and that this personal life must 
justify itself as true and divine 
within the consciousness of the 
disciple himself. At the same 
time we must bear in mind that 
this consciousness will never be 
found by looking for it, or by any 
painful inspection of our spiritual 
states, but only by building our- 



A Study 89 

selves up in loving trust and act- 
ive obedience on our most holy 
faith of the gospel of Christ. 

Practical Misconceptions 

The training and development 
of souls as the children of God is 
God's essential purpose in the cre- 
ation of men. Our human life is 
to be dealt with from this point 
of view ; and the religious teacher 
must fashion his instruction and 
direct his effort in accordance with 
this fundamental truth. His aim 
must be to help men to a con- 
sciousness of the Divine purpose, 
and to bring them into obedience 
to it. This recognition of the 
Divine will, this filial trust and 
obedience, are the heart of relig- 
ion and the central meaning of 
salvation. But the attainment of 
this end is often hindered, and 
even thwarted, by misconceptions 



90 The Christian Life 

against which we must be on our 
guard. 

The emphasis which our Church 
has placed upon the emotional as- 
pects of religion has not infre- 
quently led to grave distortions of 
the truth. Emotion is good ; and 
an emotionless religion would be 
a very questionable affair. Never- 
theless it is easy to invert the true 
order, and this has often been 
done. Attention has been with- 
drawn from the solemn surrender 
of the will and life to God in order 
to engage in a barren hunt after 
emotions. This is inverted in 
every way, both religiously and 
psychologically. We must make 
clear to the inquirer that he is to 
consider himself as no longer his 
own, but as being in all things 
the disciple of the Lord Jesus and 
the servant of God. The exceed- 
ing breadth and depth and height 
of the commandment must be 



A Study 91 

made plain, so that lie may see 
how all-inclusive is the service of 
God. And, on the other hand, 
emotions are never to be aimed 
at as things by themselves at all. 
In order to be wholesome and ra- 
tional, emotions must spring from 
ideas ; and religious emotions must 
spring from religious ideas. When 
sought by themselves and for them- 
selves, they have neither rational 
nor moral significance, but are 
purely neurological or patholog- 
ical. Religious emotions of this 
sort differ in nothing from the 
excitement of the howling or 
whirling dervishes. This is the 
source of the marked ethical 
weakness of popular revival serv- 
ices, and of the lack of moral fiber 
in so many alleged conversions. 

It follows from this that relig- 
ious emotions are not to be di- 
rectly sought. They are to come 
as the unforced attendants of our 



92 The Christian Life 

religious faith and devotion and 
obedience. When thus coming, 
they are wholesome, helpful, and 
natural. In every other case they 
are unwholesome, harmful, and 
unnatural. Indeed, emotions, as 
an affection of the sensibility, 
have so complex a root, and are 
so complicated with physical con- 
ditions, that they are generally 
worthless as a test of will and 
character. Even those relations 
in daily life which are founded on 
affection, as the relations of the 
family, admit of no test of the 
emotional sort. Devotion shows 
itself chiefly in service ; and it is 
only at special times, in some cri- 
sis perhaps, that the emotional 
sensibility is deeply stirred. L,ove 
itself abides in the will rather 
than in the feeling, and its dis- 
tinguishing mark consists in the 
set purpose to please and to serve. 
And this is true of our love for 



A Study 93 

God. It is to be found in the 
consecration of the life and the 
devotion of the will ; not in ebul- 
litions of the sensibilities, but in 
the fixed purpose to please and 
to serve. If, along with this, 
the heart should be " strangely 
warmed," there is no objection; 
but, after all, the root of the mat- 
ter must be found in the life of 
devotion and service. "If ye 
love me, keep my command- 
ments.' ' "Not every one that 
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven, 
but he that doeth the will of my 
Father which is in heaven." 
"And hereby do we know that 
we know him, if we keep his 
commandments. He that saith, 
I know him, and keepeth not his 
commandments, is a liar, and the 
truth is not in him." "Ye are 
my friends if ye do whatsoever I 
command you." Such passages 



94 The Christian Life 

as these show that the essential 
test of discipleship is ethical and 
volitional, not emotional; and 
their frequent occurrence shows a 
purpose to ward off the very error 
in question. 

A frequent consequence of this 
error concerning emotion is, that 
the attention of the inquirer is 
diverted from the central and es- 
sential thing, the surrender of the 
will and life to God, and fixed 
upon having an experience. This 
experience is crudely conceived 
as a striking emotional event 
which must be of an extraordi- 
nary character in order to meet the 
expectation. Thus the volitional 
and ethical element, which is es- 
sential, is subordinated to a pas- 
sive and emotional element, which 
in any case is only a non-essential 
attendant of religious consecra- 
tion, and which, in many cases, 
is purely pathological. That it 



A Study 95 

is such in a great many cases, ap- 
pears from the fearful dispropor- 
tion between the number of pro- 
bationers and the number of those 
received into full membership. 
Who can believe that such dis- 
proportion would exist, if the in- 
quirer had been rightly instructed, 
and had solemnly, intelligently, 
ethically devoted and consecrated 
himself to do the will of God ? 
Emotional effervescence may sub- 
side in this way, but intelligent 
and moral self-consecration does 
not. There is so much confu- 
sion among us on this point that 
the majority of inquirers are aim- 
ing to have an experience rather 
than to surrender themselves to 
God in faith and obedience. And 
with this false aim they fail to 
"get through," or to "come out 
into the light." This mistaken 
aim at an experience has so af- 
fected our conception of conver- 



96 The Christian Life 

sion that intercollegiate Christian 
workers have noticed it as a pe- 
culiarity of Methodist students 
that they seem to be seeking after 
some sign, instead of fixing their 
thought on the surrender of them- 
selves in faith to the Lord Jesus to 
be his disciples. Often enough the 
sign is not given them, and then 
comes the familiar sense of un- 
certainty and artificiality in re- 
ligion. 

In opposition to this error, our 
attention should always be di- 
rected to securing filial submis- 
sion to the will of God. The in- 
quirer must be instructed, if need 
be, in Christian truth. His 
thought must be made familiar 
with the grace of God and the 
gracious provisions of the gospel. 
Peace and joy will naturally arise 
in the penitent soul as it contem- 
plates this grace and yields itself 
to it in trust and obedience. But 



A Study 97 

their form and measure will vary 
very greatly with different persons 
according to education, temper- 
ament, and many other circum- 
stances. But the disciple must 
not concern himself about them. 
Loving submission and active 
obedience to the will of God in 
accordance with the promises of 
Christ are the supreme and only 
mark of Christian discipleship. 
We are not called upon to have ex- 
periences, or emotional upheavals, 
or witnesses of the Spirit; but 
we are called upon to surrender 
ourselves in faith and humility to 
do the will of God. Cease to do 
evil, learn to do well, is the only 
infallible test of conversion. 

The attitude of the will, then, 
is the central thing in the Chris- 
tian life. But in applying this 
truth we must guard against an 
extravagance, often amounting to 
positive error, which may arise 
7 



98 The Christian Life 

at this point. We are often told 
that we must be willing to do 
whatsoever God may require, to 
give up all for Christ, etc. ; and 
this admits of easy exaggeration. 
Formally, the statement is cor- 
rect ; but the concrete meaning is 
not always plain. Negatively, 
the meaning is simple. We must 
cease to do evil; any recognized 
iniquity, impiety, unrighteous- 
ness, wickedness, must be put 
away unhesitatingly, irrevocably, 
forever. That one should call 
himself the child of God while 
working the works of the devil, 
is not to be thought of for a mo- 
ment. 

But the positive contents of 
the idea are very crudely con- 
ceived. We often fall a prey to 
mere abstractions of theory with- 
out duly regarding the realities of 
life. Error here may take a 
double direction. We may fall 



A Study 99 

into an abstract conception of re- 
nunciation, and we may miscon- 
ceive the relation of God's will 
to the great every-day life of 
work and social relations. The 
former error is illustrated by the 
fancy of some of the older New 
England theologians, that no one 
could be saved who was not will- 
to be damned for the glory of 
God. Of course, a good closet 
argument could be made for this 
abomination. One might say 
that, so long as anything was pre- 
ferred to the Divine glory, one had 
not fully submitted to the will of 
God ; was keeping back a part of 
the price therefor, like Ananias; 
or, like Achan, had a wedge of 
gold and a Babylonish garment 
concealed in one's tent. Thor- 
ough work, then, could be made 
only by insisting upon willing- 
ness to be damned for the Divine 
glory. This was the only sure 



IOO The Christian Life 

test of selfishness. The purely 
fictitious and inhuman character 
of this demand is apparent. The 
only good thing that ever came 
out of it is the reported reply of 
an applicant to the examining 
committee which pressed the 
question, that he was willing the 
committee should be damned if 
need be. 

We have escaped such excesses ; 
but a great deal of unwisdom is 
still current on this point. Vague 
general remarks abound about 
taking up the cross, the surrender 
of this and that, the willingness 
to do a variety of disagreeable 
things ; and these are often made 
the test of discipleship. Relig- 
ious exhortation is full of matter of 
this sort ; and inquirers are left to 
torment themselves with the fancy 
that anything which revolts their 
taste or sensibility, or some purely 
imaginary thing, as a willingness 



A Study IOI 

to go as a missionary to Van Die- 
men's Land, or to address some 
stranger on the street concerning 
his soul, is a part of the cross which 
must be taken up, if one would 
enter into life. They are also led 
to think that an unwillingness to 
speak in public when they have 
nothing to say is to be ashamed 
of Jesus, or to do despite to the 
Spirit of grace. And, on the 
other hand, an unbecoming and 
unedifying volubility is often en- 
couraged from the idea that thus 
the power of grace is triumphantly 
displayed. The following quota- 
tion from a religious paper of re- 
cent publication illustrates the 
former error : 

Then the Lord God said to me: 
" David, are you willing to consecrate 
yourself?" "Yes, Lord. Everything, 
everything." And he brought one 
thing after another in this way: "Are 
you willing to leave your situation if 
I ask you?" I was quite willing. 



102 The Christian Life 

"Would you go to Africa to be eaten 
by cannibals ?" I was willing to do 
even that. Then the Lord said: 
"Would you leave your wife at home 
and go anywhere ?" O, I wasn't will- 
ing! It was very hard to leave my 
dear wife behind and go anywhere. 
Then a fight went on in my heart. I 
didn't want to yield that; but the 
Lord brought Christ very prominently 
before me, and he said that he must be 
first and my wife in the second place. 
Then he brought before me the re- 
sponsibility of heathen souls, Moham- 
medans, Buddhists, and others. " Da- 
vid, are you willing to leave all to win 
souls?" Then it came to me: "What 
am I to do? The Lord will take care 
of my wife ;" and I said, " O Lord, I 
am willing to leave my wife behind 
and go anywhere." Then the strug- 
gle ceased. "Would you like to be- 
come as the dust of Colombo for my 
sake?" Yes, I was willing. The Lord 
searched me through and through. 

All this is purely fictitious. 
The Lord said none of these 
things; they were suggested 



A Study 103 

solely by the author's own mis- 
guided mind. The Lord often 
calls us to sacrifice and renuncia- 
tion, but never in any such arti- 
ficial fashion as this. The per- 
son simply had in his mind the 
abstract notion of complete sur- 
render to God, and then proceeded 
to determine the concrete con- 
tents of the duty by calling up a 
miscellaneous collection of things 
to which he might be disinclined. 
Meanwhile reason and good sense 
were in complete abeyance, be- 
cause of the fancy that all of these 
things were directly suggested by 
God as tests of the person's sin- 
cerity. The reference to leaving 
his wife is paralleled only by the 
testimony of a brother in class- 
meeting who reported that his 
wife had died, and that he had 
been so wonderfully supported by 
Divine grace that he had not 
missed her at all or felt any sorrow. 



104 The Christian Life 

The leader had the grace and good 
sense to tell him never to repeat 
that story again, as it revealed in- 
human insensibility rather than 
Divine support. 

But with the uninstructed and 
sensitive conscience, misconcep- 
tions of this sort are likely to 
arise when one is testing his will- 
ingness to do the will of God. 
And it is not to be wondered at 
that many good Christians have 
been unwilling to have their chil- 
dren exposed to such crude and 
undiscriminating teaching. Of 
course the intellectually and mor- 
ally pachydermatous are un- 
harmed, but with the sensitive 
and uninstructed conscience the 
danger is great. And the danger 
is double. On the one hand there 
is danger of falling into fictitious 
sacrifices and mortifications ; and, 
on the other, there is danger of a 
permanent revolt against religion 



A Study 105 

when at last the fiction is seen 
through. I have had ample ex- 
perience of both results. 

There is great need at this point 
for the wise Christian teacher, in 
order to save the untaught or in- 
experienced from these dangers. 
He must distinguish between the 
positive and negative aspects of 
this surrender to the Divine will. 
Its negative meaning, we have 
said, is clear ; it involves the ut- 
ter and final abandonment or 
avoidance of all unrighteousness 
and iniquity. On the positive 
side we must emphasize the cen- 
tral and primal duties about which 
there is no question. We must 
teach the inquirer to relate his 
life, internal and external, to 
the Divine will, and especially to 
comprehend the daily round of 
routine life and of social relations, 
the round of work and rest, of 
neighborly intercourse and civic 



106 The Christian Life 

duties, within the Divine thought 
and purpose, and thus within the 
scope of religion. But we must 
resolutely defend the inquirer 
from all this unwholesome casu- 
istry concerning crossbearing, and 
testifying, and fictitious self-cru- 
cifixions, and imaginary duties and 
trumped-up sacrifices. Ignorant 
conscientiousness can settle none 
of these questions. We must fall 
back on good sense, that general 
sense of reality and soundness 
without which the moral life be- 
comes a series of snares and loses 
itself in silliness or fanaticism. 
We must point out that the es- 
sence of religion lies in the filial 
spirit, in the desire to serve and 
please God; and then we must 
point out that our all-inclusive re- 
ligious duty is to offer up the 
daily life, pervaded and sanctified 
by the filial spirit, as our spirit- 
ual service and worship of God. 



A Study 107 

But how shall we know when 
we have done enough? This is 
a question which roots partly in 
the unwholesome casuistry re- 
ferred to, and partly in a desire 
to get off as cheaply as possible. 
In the latter case it shows that 
we have neither part nor lot in 
the matter. We are trying to 
conceive a spiritual relation me- 
chanically, and we miss the spir- 
itual element altogether. By 
consequence we asssume that sal- 
vation may be something exter- 
nal, and we desire to get it at the 
best bargain. Such notions arise 
from our non-ethical conceptions 
of the subject, and disappear for- 
ever when we see that salvation 
must consist in establishing or re- 
storing the filial spirit in the 
heart. 

The question, as rooted in cas- 
uistry, overlooks the essential 
truth of the gospel. The ques- 



108 The Christian Life 

tion for the Christian to raise is 
not whether he has done enough, 
but whether he is seeking to live 
in the filial spirit. The latter 
question no one can answer for 
him, and he needs no one to an- 
swer it for. him. As to doing 
enough, no one does enough. 
There is no satisfaction in doing. 
We are at best unprofitable serv- 
ants. We can always wonder 
whether we might not have done 
more, strained a little harder, 
reached a greater intensity of ef- 
fort. This way madness lies. 
On such a view one's salvation is 
a sort of Rupert's drop, and likely 
to fly into flinders at any moment. 
To all such questions we reply 
by falling back on the gospel it- 
self. We are not members of the 
Divine family because we are prof- 
itable servants, but because God 
has declared us to be his children. 
We stand not in the value of our 



A Study 109 

services, but in the Divine love. 
And that love bears with our im- 
perfect, halting service, and takes 
the will for the deed. This is the 
gist and glory of the gospel. It 
can not be understood in forensic 
and mechanical terms, but it is 
perfectly intelligible through the 
life of the family or the gratitude 
of a penitent heart. No child has 
its place in the family because of 
the value and merit of its serv- 
ices, but because it is a child. It 
is saved by grace, not by works. 
But being a child, it can show 
forth the filial spirit in word and 
deed, and parental love does all 
the rest. Membership in the di- 
vine family is similarly condi- 
tioned. 

We must, then, declare the for- 
giveness of sins to all those who 
do truly and earnestly repent of 
their sins and intend to lead a new 
life, following the commandments 



IIO The Christian Life 

of God, and walking henceforth 
in his holy ways. And this we 
do in the name and on the author- 
ity of the Lord Jesus, who has 
revealed the Father. And we 
must allow nothing to interfere 
with the simplicity of this reve- 
lation. Mechanical conditions of 
mechanical works, and subjective 
conditions framed from emotional 
states, are alike and equally de- 
partures from the truth of the 
gospel. 

Religious Beginnings 

The religious life in its idea is 
altogether independent of the ex- 
istence of sin. We are not, then, 
to think of it as a device for over- 
coming sin or for saving sinners. 
This work, indeed, has to be done ; 
but it is only incidental to the 
deeper, more inclusive aim of re- 
ligion. Religion has to do with 
the relation of man to God, and 



A Study III 

would exist if there were no sin 
in the world or in the heart. In- 
deed, it is only in the sinless life 
that the ideal of religion can be 
perfectly realized ; for only there 
can we find the filial spirit per- 
fectly realized and perfectly ex- 
pressed. 

i In what we have now to say, 
some readers of theological tend- 
encies will miss a good deal of 
traditional matter concerning the 
relation of the sinner to God's 
law, etc. ; but we have once more 
to remind them that this, in its 
best estate, is matter of theology 
and not of experience. Whatever 
mysteries there may be in that di- 
rection, we have no practical con- 
cern with them. We have only 
to accept our place as children 
in our Father's house; and we 
must not confuse this simple truth 
of the gospel with matter drawn 
from theology. 



112 The Christian Life 

If human development were 
normal, there would be no need 
of conversion — that is, of a turn- 
ing around, or a turning to- 
ward God; for we should never 
have turned away from him. We 
should simply pass from the un- 
consciousness and passivity of 
dawning life to the distinct con- 
sciousness and volitional attitude 
of mature life. And this transi- 
tion would be made slowly, and 
without break or jar, something 
as the dawn comes up. As in the 
family life no one can tell, in the 
child's unfolding, when love and 
obedience begin, so in the normal 
development of the religious life, 
no one could tell when it begins. 
The inner life has none of the 
sharp divisions of our speech ; and 
consciousness fades away from 
clear apprehension and distinct 
volition into incipiencies, and un- 
certain dawnings, and shadowy 



A Study 113 

beginnings, where directions may 
possibly be discerned, but no fixed 
lines can be drawn. In such nor- 
mal unfolding there might be great 
individual differences of experi- 
ence, owing to differences of tem- 
perament and mental habit. With 
the more reflective the recognition 
and acceptance of the Divine will 
might be a matter of more definite 
date, but they would be no more 
real on that account than they 
would be in a life of less sharply- 
marked transitions. And with such 
reflective person such a date might 
well be a time forever to be re- 
membered unto the Lord ; but it 
would not mark a conversion, but 
only a conscious affirmation and 
ratification of what had already 
been unconsciously done. 

In actual life the nearest ap- 
proximation to such normal re- 
ligious development is found in 
the Christian family. Here, too, 
8 



114 The Christian Life 

the aim should be, not conver- 
sion, but to bring the children up 
in the nurture and admonition of 
the Lord; and the necessity of 
conversion, or a turning from sin 
to God and righteousness, hints 
strongly at parental failure either 
to grasp the truth of the gospel 
or to realize it in the family life. 
The ideal form of the Christian 
life is that which never experi- 
enced conversion, and which can 
not date its beginning. And if 
one says, But there must be a 
time of distinct choice between 
God and the world, etc., the an- 
swer would be that at best this 
only fixes the beginning of self- 
consciousness in religion and not 
the beginning of religion itself. 
And indeed self-consciousness can 
rarely be thus accurately dated; 
but religion in the properly-trained 
Christian child has complex and 
untraceable beginnings in the 



A Study 115 

spirit and atmosphere of the home, 
in childhood's prayers, in participa- 
tion in religious rites and customs, 
in imitation of those about him, 
in wise parental instruction and 
discipline, and in the hidden in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit. These 
things can not be dated. The 
date of self -consciousness in choice 
and consecration might conceiva- 
ably be fixed in the case of the 
Christian child ; but even this is 
rarely possible and it is unimpor- 
tant in any case. When does filial 
affection begin in the growing 
child, or patriotism in the devel- 
oping youth? The important 
thing is not to know when the 
day begins, but to have the day 
actually here. 

Divine grace and help are al- 
ways needed and by all alike ; but 
conversion as an event in conscious 
experience is needed only for those 
who, from evil training or from 



Il6 The Christian Life 

willful transgression, have turned 
away from God. All such per- 
sons must convert themselves; 
that is, must turn around and turn 
towards God and righteousness. 
But in all cases the thing aimed 
at is the same — the establishment 
of the filial spirit as the ruling 
principle of life and action. 
Where the filial spirit is con- 
sciously present we have the chil- 
dren of the kingdom. Where it 
is consciously absent we have the 
children of disobedience. Where 
there is no consciousness as yet 
of the higher goods and relations 
of life we have simply the sub- 
religious state in which so many 
human beings exist, and out of 
which they are to develop through 
the multiform discipline and ex- 
perience of life. Meanwhile they 
are the objects of the Divine 
grace and are comprised in an 
order divinely appointed for their 



A Study 117 

development and unfolding into 
deeper and higher life. Hard and 
fast divisions and classifications 
are impossible in such an order ; 
and forensic distinctions are as 
grotesquely impossible as they 
would be in the life of the fam- 
ily. Meanwhile it is the task of 
the Christian teacher and of the 
mature disciple to co-operate with 
the Divine love by setting forth 
and revealing the higher life by 
precept and example both person- 
ally and through the organized 
institutions of the Christian 
family and the Church. 

And in doing this work it is 
important to remember that the 
religious life, except in its central 
factor of the filial and obedient 
spirit, is no simple and single 
thing which is present always and 
all at once and to all alike. On 
the contrary, the contents of re- 
ligious experience vary with the 



Il8 The Christian Life 

disciple's age, temperament, men- 
tal type and nature of his previ- 
ous life. The Christian life is 
one in principle, but in form and 
contents it is as varied as human- 
ity itself. 

This truth has not been duly 
regarded by the Churches which 
emphasize conversion and per- 
sonal experience. The tendency 
has been to construct a pattern 
to which all should conform ; and 
this pattern has largely been built 
out of subjective emotional states 
and various marks of grace which 
only, it was thought, clearly dis- 
tinguish the work of the Spirit 
from spurious imitations. This 
was generally harmless when 
we were dealing with hardened 
sinners, but it became mischie- 
vous when applied to the religion 
of childhood, and to the religious 
life that should develop under the 
influence of a Christian home and 



A Sttidy 119 

in a Christian community. Ow- 
ing to the confusion of theology 
with experience, or to the undue 
estimate of emotional factors, the 
popular ideal of the religious life 
in our individualistic Churches 
has little application to the larger 
part of the community. 

Types of Religious Experience 
In order to escape the confu- 
sion and inadequacy of traditional 
thought on this general subject, 
we must observe that the relig- 
ious life is manifold in content 
and manifestation according to 
the age, the mental type, and 
one's experience of life. 

Apart from the variations de- 
pendent upon age, temperament, 
and the vicissitudes of the indi- 
vidual lot, there are distinct types 
of religious thought and feeling, 
all of which are equally founded 
in human nature, and no one of 



120 The Christian Life 

which may set itself up as the 
norm or ideal by which the others 
may be tested. 

The first type is the ethical. 
Religion consists in righteousness ; 
but it is more than abstract ethics, 
because the moral law, from being 
an impersonal principle, is elevated 
into the expression of a supreme 
and holy will. The regard for im- 
personal abstractions is replaced by 
enthusiasm for the kingdom of 
God. Christianity summons us 
to be members of this kingdom 
and co-workers with God in its es- 
tablishment. Under the lead of 
the Captain of our salvation, and 
relying on his word and promises, 
we become conscious subjects of 
the kingdom. In quiet times, and 
with persons of wholesome train- 
ing and habits, or with persons of 
unemotional type, and especially 
with children, this is the prevail- 
ing type of Christian experience. 



A Study 121 

It is not markedly emotional. It 
is not given to fervors, whether 
of joy or remorse. It has no deep 
distress over the depravity of our 
nature, and no flaming raptures 
over our deliverance. But it is 
founded in conscience; and a 
very large part of the work of the 
Church is done by the Christians 
of this type. This is the Chris- 
tianity of the Synoptic Gospels, 
and of the epistles of James and 
Peter. 

But this is not the cnly type. 
It is fundamental indeed ; and any 
type which does not include it is 
false. But it does not include the 
whole of Christian experience. 
There are souls which can be sat- 
isfied with their obedience to 
God's law. They hear the com- 
mandment, and they obey ; and the 
joy of a good conscience is theirs. 
But there are other souls which 
can never find peace in this way. 



122 The Christian Life 

For them the commandment is 
exceedingly broado It is not a 
matter of detached duties, but 
takes account of the heart. They 
hold their lives up against the 
keen, still splendor of the Divine 
perfection, and they are over- 
whelmed by the revelation. For 
such persons there is no peace in 
doing. The more they do the 
worse they feel. For the ideal 
grows with obedience and thus 
condemns them more and more. 
For this state of mind there is 
only one prescription. They 
must be taken out of themselves 
and away from the contemplation 
of their own efforts, and must be 
taught that we are saved by grace, 
not works. Then their distress is 
removed by the vision of that con- 
descending grace from above 
which saves us through itself. 
This is the Pauline type of Chris- 
tian experience. It is not more 



A Study 123 

truly Christian than the purely 
ethical type, but it is different. It 
is more intense, and touches the 
moral life at deeper depths. With 
persons of a mechanical type it 
may pass over into Antinomian- 
ism, and thus, in revolting from 
bondage to rules, become the ex- 
treme of immorality. But when 
rightly understood, when inter- 
preted vitally and ethically, it in- 
cludes the obedience of the eth- 
ical type, but transcends it by a 
higher moral ideal and insight. 

Another type of Christian ex- 
perience arises from the desire for 
direct personal communion with 
God. If God indeed dwell within 
us, there must be some other way 
of reaching him than by hearsay, 
whether of the Bible or of the- 
ology, or of the Church. And 
if we are his children, there must 
be some way of direct commun- 
ion with our Father. Besides, 



124 The Christian Life 

the life of work is only part of ex- 
perience. There is also the life of 
contemplation, of secret aspira- 
tion, of adoration and worship. 
And this certainly can not all be 
on one side, as if we prayed into 
the empty air with no answer 
but the echo of our own voices. 
Here the mystical element of re- 
ligion reveals itself. And this, 
too, is a real aspect of the relig- 
ious life ; not equally recognized 
by all, and scarcely realized at all 
by many, but important neverthe- 
less. It is represented by the 
writings of St. John in the New 
Testament, by the various bodies 
of mystics in Church history, and 
by multitudes of individual saints. 
As said, it belongs to the contem- 
plative rather than the active side 
of religion ; but it is important, 
even for practice, by furnishing 
the living water, without which 
life loses its deepest spring. 



A Study 125 

The perfect Christian life would 
involve all of these forms of ex- 
perience; but in our one-sided 
life, one form or another predom- 
inates, and then we have to be on 
our guard against the shortcom- 
ings of that form. For each form 
has tendencies to error which will 
surely develop unless proper pre- 
caution be taken. The ethical 
form by itself may easily issue in 
Pharisaism and spiritual pride. 
When the spiritual nature is not 
deep, duty is exhausted in com- 
mandments ; and if anything more 
be suspected, it is simply another 
commandment. The young man 
who had kept the law from his 
youth up, or the Pharisee who 
recited his good deeds in his 
prayers, furnishes a fair specimen 
of the tendency and the danger. 
And this can be averted only by 
enlarging the moral insight, and 
replacing a code of isolated good 



126 The Christian Life 

works by the law of perfect purity 
and perfect love. This only can 
cause the self-satisfied Pharisee to 
exchange his vainglorious prayers 
for the cry of the publican, "God 
be merciful to me a sinner !" The 
ethical type, also, from its pre- 
eminent attention to conduct and 
action, tends to become dry and 
thin, and to lose itself in inef- 
fectual bustle, while the spiritual 
life withers. This, too, can be 
avoided, only by the deepening 
and enriching influences of prayer 
and meditation, and of spiritual 
communion with the Father of 
our spirits. Thus the ethical type 
of religious life always needs to 
be combined with the other types 
in order to save it from its own 
shortcomings. 

But they equally need to be 
combined with the ethical type to 
save them from their own short- 
comings. When one has sought 



A Study 127 

in vain for peace through me- 
chanical good works or strenuous 
conscientiousness, there is no more 
glorious truth than this, that we 
are saved by grace through faith ; 
but this becomes a pernicious and 
immoral doctrine unless it be eth- 
ically apprehended and applied. 
How often this danger has been 
realized is familiar to every stu- 
dent of Church history. The 
contemplative life also easily loses 
itself in quietistic indifference to 
the work of the world, or in a 
barren cultivation of emotions, 
in which all moral quality and 
moral strenuousness disappear al- 
together. Now, while the ethical 
view needs to be deepened by the 
others, they, in turn, need the eth- 
ical view to give them fiber and 
substance, and to furnish the act- 
ive nature of man a worthy task. 
And this can be found only in re- 
calling the mind from painful in- 



128 The Christian Life 

spection of its own states, and 
from quietistic dreaming and con- 
templation, and setting it npon 
the positive task of realizing the 
kingdom of God in the world. 
The ethical view is fundamental 
and central ; and however far we 
may go in religious fervor and as- 
piration, we must never lose sight 
of the ethical aim. All truly re- 
ligious growth and insight must 
be based on this. And one of the 
promising features of the present 
religious outlook is the tendency 
to pay less attention to subjective 
states, and more to the objective 
aim of building up the kingdom 
of God, which is the kingdom of 
righteousness and good will. 

These various types of religious 
experience appear among the apos- 
tles themselves. Jesus is the only 
man who has perfectly united 
them, and perfectly realized the 
perfect life. The types reappear 



A Study 129 

in Church history ; and it would 
not be difficult to group existing 
religious bodies by this standard. 
And when to these fundamental 
differences we add those arising 
from difference of temperament, 
circumstances, experience of life, 
we see how impossible it is to 
fashion individual experience ac- 
cording to a single pattern. The 
attempt to do so implies a species 
of religious provincialism which 
is in sad need of enlightenment 
These facts must be borne in 
mind by the Christian teacher ; 
and he must carefully refrain 
from applying any other test of 
religion than the filial spirit, or 
the desire and purpose to serve 
and please God by keeping his 
commandments. The grace of 
God does all the rest And on 
this most holy faith of the gos- 
pel we are to build ourselves up 
into all obedience and spiritual 
9 



130 The Christian Life 

growth through the assisting 
grace of the Holy Spirit. In this 
way the Christian life will unfold 
naturally and in accordance with 
the experience and peculiar type 
of the individual. Nothing being 
demanded but the filial spirit, 
that spirit can manifest itself in va- 
rious ways and be the same spirit 
in them all. Thus we secure 
in the Christian life something 
of the artistic effect of free spon- 
taneity and of varied individual- 
ity instead of a mechanical monot- 
ony. By fixing our thought on 
the filial spirit, we shall run little 
risk of confusing ourselves with 
theological and metaphysical sub- 
tleties on the one hand, or with 
artificial and impossible experi- 
ences on the other. Christian 
truth is manifold and meets the 
needs of all ; but every phase of this 
truth does not appeal equally to all, 
nor even to the same at all times. 



A Study 131 

Religion of Childhood 

The teaching and practice of 
the individualistic Churches con- 
cerning the religion of childhood 
have generally oscillated between 
two extremes of error ; either 
children have been viewed as in- 
capable of religion, or forms of 
experience have been demanded 
from them which are possible only 
to mature life, and often only to 
abandoned sinners. In this mat- 
ter our Methodist practice has 
been far worse than our theory. 
Theoretically we have held the 
right view of Christian childhood 
and its relation to the Church. 
We regard all children who have 
been baptized as placed in visible 
covenant relation to God, and un- 
der the special care and super- 
vision of the Church. The pastor 
is required to organize the bap- 
tized children, not excluding the 



132 The Christian Life 

unbaptized, into classes for relig- 
ious instruction ; and whenever 
tlie baptized children shall under- 
stand the obligations of religion 
and give evidence of piety, they 
may be admitted into full mem- 
bership in the Church. But prac- 
tically these wise provisions, 
though in the direct line of our 
theology, have been generally ig- 
nored. We have "leaned too 
much to Calvinism " in practice ; 
and a particular conception of 
conversion has further confused 
matters by demanding from the 
children experiences which belong 
only to mature life. Here is one 
root of our relative ill-success in 
this field, and of our frequent fail- 
ure to hold our more thoughtful 
families beyond one or two gen- 
erations. And this ill-success and 
failure will continue and increase 
until we put our own doctrines 
on this subject into rational prac- 



A Study 133 

tice. We must no longer allow a 
mechanical devotion to inherited 
and often mechanical methods to 
drive us into the gross pedagog- 
ical and psychological error of ex- 
pecting from childhood the relig- 
ious manifestations of maturity. 

All the Churches which em- 
phasize personal religion have 
been more or less guilty of this 
fault; and they need to bring 
forth fruits meet for repentance. 
There is a large body of feelings, 
much affected by the artificially 
spiritual, which are not religious 
at all, but are simply expressions 
of advancing age. Such are the 
sense of the brevity of life and of 
the unsatisfying nature of all 
earthly things. Feelings of this 
sort are unnatural to the young ; 
and language of this sort from 
them can only be an echo, or an 
expression of artificial sentiment. 
There are many other feelings of 



134 The Christian Life 

a religious nature which are also 
impossible to the young. Such 
are a deep sense of sinfulness, of 
human weakness, of the deprav- 
ity of human nature, of the im- 
perfection of our righteousness, 
and of the constant need of Divine 
grace and forbearance and forgive- 
ness. Such insight is impossible 
to childhood, for it is born only 
of the deeper experiences of ma- 
ture life and of the sterner con- 
flicts of faith. Yet we have not 
scrupled to gather up these feel- 
ings and convictions as pre-emi- 
nently marks of grace, and to 
look for them in the life of child- 
hood. And sometimes the child 
repeats the phrases, to our great 
delight and edification. Or we 
see that the meaning is really be- 
yond the child, and then we con- 
clude that children are incapable 
of religion. 

Both of these errors are to be 



A Study 135 

avoided. The religion of matu- 
rity is impossible to childhood, 
but the religion of childhood is 
religion nevertheless. It is largely 
of the simple ethical type, not 
without its naive misconceptions 
and innocent misunderstandings; 
but it may be very loyal for all 
that. We often misjudge the re- 
ligion of childhood by misinter- 
preting the transparency of child- 
hood. When we find petulance, 
inconstancy, inconsistency, indif- 
ference in children, we conclude 
that there is no religious princi- 
ple. But the poorer show that 
childhood makes in these re- 
spects in comparison with the 
more mature is commonly due to 
its transparent simplicity. It has 
not learned self-control and dissim- 
ulation. It finds the Sabbath 
irksome, and says so. It finds the 
religious exercise distasteful, and 
the fact is revealed. The man 



136 The Christian Life 

has the same experience, but keeps 
it to himself. His thoughts may 
be all abroad during the prayer 
or the sermon, but nobody knows 
it. Due consideration of this fact 
would lead to a juster estimate of 
the religion of childhood. 

Christian truth, we have already 
said, is manifold, and meets the 
needs of all ; but the needs vary 
with age, experience, tempera- 
ment, mental type, etc., and the 
religious life will vary to corre- 
spond. This must be borne in 
mind in dealing with the religion 
of the young. It is one of God's 
great mercies that those who have 
the earthly life before them are 
generally pleased with it. Hence, 
to the young, it is a glad thing to 
live, and we ought not to wish it 
otherwise. Without this naive 
optimism of youth, life would 
hardly be possible ; and nothing 
could well be more false to Chris- i 



A Study 137 

tian truth and the Christian spirit 
than interference therewith in the 
supposed interests of piety. We 
must not, then, call upon the 
young to have mournful and de- 
spondent feelings about the life 
that now is, and a desire to depart 
and be with Christ, in the fancy 
that thereby they become more 
truly religious. We must rather 
remind them that this earth also 
is one of the many mansions in 
the Father's house, and seek to 
help them to relate this life to 
God's will. The child's optimism 
is really nearer the truth than the 
old man's pessimism; for it is 
God's world after all, and it is 
right that we should rejoice in it 
and be glad; and instead of re- 
buking the children for their sim- 
ple joy in life, we should rather 
rebuke the pessimism of maturity 
as rooting in a lack of faith. 
Let, then, the children take 



138 The Christian Life 

their vows with a glad heart ; and 
when life wears on, and experi- 
ence deepens, and the overturn- 
ings come, they will learn of them- 
selves that this earth is not our 
rest, and will appreciate the life 
and immortality brought to light 
in the gospel. They will also 
learn the blessedness of the cor- 
responding fact that we are saved 
by grace. Any true appreciation 
of these things comes only through 
life. The formulas may be learned 
from a catechism, but their mean- 
ing comes from experience ; and, 
coming in this way, it is unforced 
and natural. It is not a sign of 
grace, which is anxiously to be 
sought for in all Christians, but 
an insight which is developed only 
in the maturer Christian life. And 
the lacking insight, or the lesser 
measure of insight, points only to 
a less advanced religious develop- 
ment, and not to being an alien 



A Study 139 

or stranger in the household of 
faith. 

And now we must have a final 
word with the traditionalist, who 
confuses theology with experience. 
He will certainly miss, in the pre- 
vious exposition, a deal to which 
he has been accustomed. He is 
not content to find in conversion 
simply a turning to God in trust 
and obedience according to the 
commands and promises of Christ, 
but discerns in it mysterious fo- 
rensic relations to the Divine jus- 
tice, and also deep metaphysical 
changes in the soul itself. The 
former element is necessary in 
order to meet the supposed de- 
mands of justice; and the latter 
element is peculiarly necessary for 
distinguishing the work of grace 
from mere natural goodness. Such 
goodness, not being of faith, is of 
course of sin ; and there is needed 



140 The Christian Life 

some sure standard whereby these 
counterfeits of grace may be de- 
tected. Such a standard is at least 
formally furnished by the view in 
question. Judged by character 
and conduct, it is not easy to mark 
off men into two sharply distinct 
classes; but if we may suppose 
some hidden forensic or metaphys- 
ical change or event, then the 
distinction is easy. The converted 
are those in whom this change 
has taken place. All others are 
unconverted, and their righteous- 
ness, however fair in seeming, is 
filthy rags. But as thus conceived, 
the operation is as mechanical as 
baptismal regeneration itself. It 
is taken entirely out of the intel- 
ligible ethical realm, and is with 
difficulty saved from vanishing 
into abstract hocus-pocus. 

We escape this confusion by 
again reminding ourselves that 
salvation on the human side must 



A Study 141 

essentially consist in the produc- 
tion of the filial spirit, and that 
forensic difficulties, if not fictions 
of abstract theology, are something 
with which we have no practical 
concern. Whatever hidden diffi- 
culties in the Divine nature or 
government there may be respect- 
ing the forgiveness of sins, our 
Methodist faith is that they have 
all been met, so that our sole 
duty is to proclaim the forgive- 
ness of sins, to call the prodigals 
home to the Father's house, and 
to bring up the children to be the 
sons and daughters of the Lord 
Almighty. All beyond this is 
theology, and is of no practical 
moment. The great danger to 
which men are exposed consists 
in unlikeness to God in sympathy 
and purpose. If this unlikeness 
can be removed, everything else 
will take care of itself. Remem- 
bering the form of human devel- 



142 The Christian Life 

opment and the universality of 
the provisions of the gospel, we 
must say that every one is in the 
Divine family who does not insist 
on taking himself out. And our 
effort must be directed to bring- 
ing men to recognize their duties, 
relations, and privileges as mem- 
bers of the family. 

But the person who thinks me- 
chanically will continue to ask, 
Who, then, are the saved ? This 
question is best answered by ask- 
ing another, Who are the un- 
saved ? To this we can give an an- 
swer. The unsaved are all those 
who are living in unrighteousness 
and unfilial rejection of the law 
and grace of God. These are the 
prodigal sons who must return to 
their Father or reap the fruit of 
their doings. All others are saved 
in this sense, that they are compre- 
hended in an order of Divine 
grace which is working toward 



A Study 143 

their development into the con- 
sciousness and acceptance of their 
place in God's family. But the 
development is nowhere complete. 
It stretches all the way from the 
unconsciousness of childhood to 
the still imperfect apprehension 
and devotion of the mature saint. 
But all alike stand in the Divine 
grace; and the Divine love is 
bearing them on. And our task 
consists in co-working with this 
love, that the will of God may be 
seen and done by us, and on the 
earth, as it is seen and done in 
heaven. Beyond this, judgment 
is not ours. Our sole hope is in 
the mercy and goodness of God. 

Conclusion 

It is no quick and easy pro- 
cess, this building of men into 
the realization of their Divine 
sonship. The theory may be 



144 The Christian Life 

simple but the practice is diffi- 
cult. We can all see what is to 
be done; but how to do it, de- 
mands all our wisdom and all 
our patience. The work pro- 
ceeds slowly within ourselves; 
and this should moderate our im- 
patience at its slowness in others. 
God has patience with us, and 
we in our measure must have pa- 
tience also. I am far from think- 
ing, then, that any short cuts 
have been revealed as the result 
of our study. My only thought 
has been to reach a clearer con- 
ception of the Divine aim and 
method in human life which will 
save us from misdirected effort 
and misleading expectations in our 
attempts to realize the kingdom 
of God. Several points may be 
mentioned as significant for the 
better prosecution of our work. 
i. Personal religion is the ideal 
of religious development, and the 



A Study 145 

development may never be viewed 
as complete until this ideal has 
been reached. . No rites or for- 
mulas or institutions or officials 
can take its place ; and they must 
never be allowed to thrust them- 
selves between the soul and God 
as necessary media of the Divine 
favor or manifestation. The only 
value we can attribute to them is 
of an instrumental, pedagogical, 
and temporary character. On this 
point we can not be too peremp- 
tory. It marks the difference 
between a mechanical and a spir- 
itual religion. 

2. In realizing this ideal we 
must carefully distinguish the 
language of theology from that 
of experience. Without this dis- 
tinction the untrained disciple is 
inevitably confused, and seeks, as 
we have said, to experience the- 
ology rather than religion. 

3. We must remember the im- 
jo 



146 The Christian Life 

perfection of language itself as an 
instrument for expressing the in- 
ner life. We must guard against its 
over-definiteness, and also against 
mistaking its metaphors for facts. 
This can be done only by using 
language critically, by passing 
behind the word to the fact and 
by inquiring whether the language 
describes an experience or sets 
forth an ideal. Much language 
is of the latter sort, as often in 
prayer; it represents nothing we 
have ever experienced, but rather 
an ideal aspiration. The religious 
teacher must exercise great care 
at this point to save inexperi- 
enced hearers from dangerous ver- 
bal snares. 

4. We must distinguish be- 
tween the theological theory 
which may be necessary for a 
philosophy of Christianity and 
the simple truth of God's grace 
and gracious condescension which 



A Study 147 

is the practical gist of the gospel. 
Along with this we must see that 
the production of the filial spirit 
in men is the essential practical 
meaning of salvation. If we can 
secure this, we may be sure that 
all else will be provided for. 

5. We must put supreme empha- 
sis on the ethical and volitional ele- 
ment in conversion, and make it 
forever impossible for our hear- 
ers to mistake anything for re- 
ligion which does not include as 
its essential factor absolute loy- 
alty to the will of God. This 
does not imply that emotion is to 
be rejected, or that it is not good ; 
but only that it is always to 
spring from Christian ideas, and 
is to be subordinated to moral 
ends. Only thus can it be kept 
sane and pure ; and only thus can 
the popular revival service be 
saved from degenerating into 
pathological excesses, scandalous 



148 The Christian Life 

alike to good taste, to good sense, 
and to good morals. But when 
emotion springs from Christian 
truth, and is subordinated to 
moral ends, we can not have too 
much of it. 

6. We must remember that re- 
ligious experience is no simple and 
single thing alike in all, but is as 
complex and multiform as life 
itself. We must, then, beware of 
forming a single standard or pat- 
tern of thought and feeling to 
which all should conform, beyond 
the one central factor of submis- 
sion to the will of God. A recog- 
nition and artistic development of 
individuality are needed in this 
field. 

7. We must deal more ration- 
ally with the religion of child- 
hood, neither allowing the chil- 
dren to run wild, nor expecting of 
them the religious manifestations 
of maturity. For this work wise 



A Study 149 



pastoral oversight will be needed, 
and also, and more especially, a 
wise and sympathetic home re- 
ligion. 

8. More attention should be 
given to Christian training and 
edification. Whatever may be 
the case with other Churches, the 
Methodist Church, as a body, needs 
to give more attention to the edifi- 
cation of the saints and to the 
building of character. Conver- 
sion, in any sense, is only intro- 
ductory — the crude beginning, 
and not the end. 

9. We must expand our con- 
ception of religion until it be- 
comes the principle of all living, 
and includes all life within its 
scope. We must take all the 
great normal interests of human- 
ity — the social, the industrial, the 
educational, the political — into 
the field of religion. These fur- 
nish the field in and through 



150 The Christian Life 

which the Christian spirit is to 
realize itself. The Church, as a 
whole, has been sadly lacking in 
this matter. The tendency has 
been to count only the formally 
religious activity- — the activity of 
prayer and meditation and wor- 
ship — as being truly religious; 
and the religious value of the 
great secular life, with all its 
manifold interests, has been 
largely ignored. One great con- 
dition of religious progress in the 
future must lie in removing this 
false and unchristian antithesis of 
the secular and the religious. 

10. The spirit, the life, is the 
essential thing ; methods are only 
instrumental, and are valuable 
solely for what they help us to. 
All religious teachers should bear 
this fact in mind, lest they fall a 
prey to a mechanical devotion to 
mechanical methods, and thus 
miss the end for which all meth- 



A Study 151 

ods exist. There can be no doubt 
that this danger has often been 
realized in our Churches. The 
growth of intelligence, the spread 
of good taste, a more independent 
and critical way of thinking, have 
made many traditional methods 
distasteful or ineffective. This is 
especially the case with revival 
methods, many of which, more- 
over, rest upon an outgrown the- 
ology, and all of which need to 
be revised in the interest of both 
good sense and religion. The in- 
dications are that hereafter the 
Churches will have to rely mainly 
on religious training for children 
and "hand-picking" for the ma- 
ture. In any case, we must re- 
member that there is nothing sa- 
cred in methods; that the pres- 
ent value of a method depends 
on its adaptation to present cir- 
cumstances; and that the most 
effective method is the best 



152 The Christian Life 

There is a general reaction in the 
pedagogical world against rigid 
mechanical methods, and a de- 
mand for individual and sympa- 
thetic treatment of pupils. This 
reaction should extend to relig- 
ious pedagogy. Mechanism has 
been overdone here, and there is 
great need for some independence, 
originality, flexibility, and living 
sympathy on the part of the re- 
ligious teacher. Meanwhile, crit- 
ical friends must administer "faith- 
ful wounds." 

None of these things, nor all 
of them together, can give life; 
but a due regard of them will re- 
move obstructions which hinder 
life's best development. Because of 
needless misunderstandings, many 
wander in the desert, unable to 
enter the promised land. 



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